Word: restavek
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...about their country's eroding laws and sovereignty, and raises the disturbing issue of children who really are in danger. The quake has left thousands of orphans vulnerable to being preyed upon by child traffickers and those who perpetuate Haiti's shameful tradition of keeping child slaves, known as restaveks. Restavek in Creole means "to stay with," an innocuous term for a far more sinister practice: children "stay with" more affluent families as slaves, and like most slaves, they're usually subject to physical, emotional and sexual abuse...
...Restaveks who do get away have grim stories to tell. A young man recently went to Romer with hideous burns from an iron, a punishment by his West Palm Beach, Fla., "host" family whenever he didn't press their clothes correctly. Aside from losing their childhood, restaveks suffer separation from their own families. At the Maurice Sixto shelter in Port-au-Prince, Ania Derice, 18, recalls how her parents in rural central Haiti, who couldn't afford to feed and clothe her, sent her to a house in Port-au-Prince to be a restavek. When Ania was 12--after...
...that stark dilemma for most restaveks--slavery or privation--that allows their masters to rationalize the practice as more benevolent than benighted. "She's like a member of our family," insists Micheline Dornevil, 43, whom Ania serves as well as Dornevil's five children. "No, none of this restavek stuff. What we've done is help her." Romer often gets the same response from restavek "hosts" in Miami. "They actually think they're doing a positive thing for these children," she says. "And if they bring them to the U.S., ooh, then they really think they're doing a good...
...turns out, however, being a restavek in the Haitian community in the U.S.--where immigrants acquire a higher self-image--is usually a source of more shame than it is in Haiti. Whereas restaveks in Haiti spoke freely with TIME, all the Miami restaveks interviewed pleaded that their real names not be used and their photos not be taken...
Still, that the community is acknowledging the practice at all is a start, and a sign that Haitian Americans, like Cuban Americans before them, are beginning the passage from huddled refugees to more confident immigrants and players in the U.S. "We are not going to let Haitian traditions like restavek flourish here because we know now that America is the great equalizer among us," says attorney Phillip Brutus, who in November was elected Florida's first Haitian-American state legislator. "We're making giant leaps from where we were 10 years ago in that sense...