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In another posting when I commented that children would be kidnapped, others remarked that I was "Nutz".
Children at Risk Foundation (CARF) - HAITIAN STREET CHILDREN & RESTAVEKS
www.carfweb.net/haiti_appeal.html
At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
On average, restaveks work eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, have extremely poor health, nutrition, low educational attainment and their living conditions are appalling. They sleep on the bare floor or on a mat on the floor next to their master's bed or under the kitchen table. They use an old rolled up dress as a billow or a blanket. Restaveks wear dirty, old clothing and shoes with holes in them, sometimes too big for their small bodies. Also, they are permitted to bathe only once a week. While these children prepare meals for their masters, they are not allowed to eat with the family and must wait until everyone finishes and leaves the table in order to eat the leftovers from the meal that he or she cooked. The master requires that the child domestic use a specific plate, cup, and fork, made out of tin and bent out of shape. The restavek must wash and store these utensils separately, perhaps for a fear that he or she will contaminate the rest of the family's "good" dining equipment. The child is further separated from social life as the restavek spends virtually the entire day indoors unless he or she is fetching water, cleaning chamber pots, or visiting the market. And while indoors, he or she sits in isolation when not doing chores. These children are not allowed to speak unless their owners speak to them or permit them to speak. In addition to the daily schedule and tasks and the living conditions, these children suffer great physical and emotional danger, are beaten, tortured, raped, falsely accused and verbally assaulted. — Recollections by a former restavek, Jean-Robert Cadet 1998 in his autobiography, "Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American"
Haiti: Socio-Political Crisis OCHA Situation Report No. 14
www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/AllDocsByUNID/e495dc5b203af05585256ed6005e7d00
At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
CHILDREN AT RISK
9. Child domestic workers are perhaps amongst the most exploited sectors in Haiti. A child who stays with and works for another family is called a "restavec" (rester avec), in Creole. According to the Restavec Children Foundation, these children are often given away or sold by poor families in order to survive. Frequently the children's most basic rights to health and education are denied. They are not paid for their work and often abused. For instance, the restavecs have to return to their duties in the house, after having escorted the house owner's children to school. The restavec boys and the girls often flee at the age of 12-13, joining one of the many street gangs or ending up as prostitutes.
Prosecutors to seek reduction of sentence for Pines woman in slavery case
www.ecpat.net/eng/Ecpat_inter/IRC/newsdesk_articles.asp?SCID=1409
A 12-year-old girl, referred to in the indictment as "W.K.," was nicknamed "Little Hope" in South Florida's Haitian community when her plight became known five years ago. She claimed to have been beaten, raped, and forced to work as a maid and serve, since the age of 9, as a sex slave for the Pompees' son, then 20.
According to the indictment, the girl was smuggled from Haiti after her mother, who once worked there for the Pompees, died in 1996.
Haiti - Tarnished Children [PDF]
[page 7] LESLIE - I am eleven years old. I don’t remember how long ago my mum placed me in the care of my aunt. I’m the only one to sleep on the floor in her house. Every day, I get up at 4 o’clock. I do everything. I prepare breakfast for the children, I sweep the floor, I go to collect water. And when my aunt goes to work in the market, I carry on: I go for more water, I do the washing, and I wash the dishes… One day I had a quarrel with one of my aunt’s daughters, and she whipped me for that. On another occasion I was watching television and the food that was on the cooker got burnt. I also got whipped for that. My mum lives in the province. She came to see me last Sunday, but it’s very rare. I have given up asking her to take me back with her. I know she doesn’t have enough money to feed me.
Haiti's Dark Secret: The Restavecs
Haiti, a nation of only eight million people, is home to some 300,000 restavecs -– young children who are frequently trafficked from the rural countryside to work as domestic servants in the poverty-stricken nation's urban areas.
Among her other duties, Josiméne cares for two younger children, cleans the house, washes dishes, scrubs laundry by hand, runs errands and sells small items from the family's informal store. She has lived this way for over two years, since she was seven. It has been over six months since she has seen her family.
The alarm is particularly acute given Haiti’s dire record of child abuse. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported in 2008 that 29 per cent of children under 14 were already working, and roughly 300,000 were ‘restaveks’ (a creole corruption of ‘rester avec’) whose impoverished parents send them to work for wealthier families in the hope they will receive food and shelter.
Some were cared for and educated, but others were "sexually exploited and physically abused; and are unpaid, undocumented, and unprotected". When they turn 15, and must by law be paid, many are turned on to the streets to join as many as 3,000 other children who survive on the streets of Port-au-Prince as vendors, beggars or prostitutes.
Even before the earthquake, Haitian children were regularly sent to the Dominican Republic to work in sex tourism, or recruited by armed gangs. A Haitian women’s organisation documented 140 rapes of girls younger than 18 years in the 18 months to June 2008. Haiti’s many orphanages — there are said to be 200 in Port-au-Prince alone — are poorly regulated, and some are mere fronts for international child traffickers.
Originally posted by Dock9
reply to post by December_Rain
If true, let's hope the children will be provided a better life
And let's pray they're being adopted by people who will value them
and are not disappearing into the (SPIT !! ) child-sex trade