Jean-Claude Duvalier clique of hardline Duvalierist cronies, the so-called "dinosaurs". Foreign officials and observers also seemed tolerant toward "Baby Doc" in areas such as human rights monitoring and foreign countries were more generous to him with economic assistance. The Nixon administration restored the United States aid program for Haiti in 1971. On 27 May 1980, Duvalier married Michèle Bennett Pasquet in a wedding that cost US$2million. The extravagance of the couple's wedding did not lack local critics, though "The Christian Science Monitor" reported that "the event... was enthusiastically received by a majority of Haitians". Discontent among the business community and elite intensified
Simone Duvalier were encouraged to acquire vocational skills and Simone Ovide was trained as a nurse's aide. While working as a nurse she met a young doctor named François Duvalier. The couple was married on 27 December 1939, and had four children: Marie Denise, Nicole, Simone “Queen”, and Jean-Claude, their only son. After their marriage, François Duvalier became minister of public health and labor in 1949 and won election to the presidency in 1957. Throughout his 14 years in office, his wife guarded access to her husband and developed and promoted her own palace favorites. Because of her acquired status and her