While her fellow government concentrators have wrestled with the intricacies of trade policy and diplomacy, Adams House resident Cynthia Dorsainvil '97 has learned much harder lessons in the reality of international politics.

Last summer, her parents were killed while vacationing in their homeland of Haiti, which was in the midst of political upheaval.

Since then, Dorsainvil has initiated an effort to bring her parents' killers to justice that has crossed international borders and swept in members of the Harvard community.

Pierre Dorsainvil, 69, a retired factory worker, and his wife, Josephine, 62, a factory worker, had just finished building a vacation home in the small town of Arcahaie, Haiti, where both were born, raised, met and were married.

According to Dorsainvil, her parents were spending their first night in the new house late on June 29 when four "zinglingdo," or gang members, broke in and, in the course of a robbery, shot and killed Dorsainvil's mother and wounded her father, who died the next day.

The only survivor of the incident, a teenage maid who was shot four times, later testified against the gang members but then went into hiding, Dorsainvil says.

Dorsainvil says she was in her New York home preparing for work when her older brother arrived to tell her what had happened.

"It's hard," she says, nearly eight months later, recalling her initial reaction. "It's like--what do you do after this?"

The Investigation

Dorsainvil says the investigation by the Haitian authorities into her parents' murder has been a "joke."

"They had made some inquiries and they claim that they arrested some people," she says.

Dorsainvil says one of her older sisters went to Haiti and was surprised to find that the gang members were released the next day.

In addition to that initial setback, Dorsainvil says the U.S. embassy told her it could not help her gain restitution because her parents had not been American citizens.

Dorsainvil eventually gained support from an unexpected source.

After reading accounts of the murder in New York newspapers, Roy Smith '80, a human rights lawyer and professor at the City University of New York, called Dorsainvil to offer his counsel.