As a child growing up in Haiti, Jean-Robert Cadet slept under the kitchen table, washed the feet of the woman he served and endured beatings with a leather whip.
He never celebrated his birthday, could only speak when spoken to and worked without pay, dusting the furniture, cleaning the floor and sweeping the yard while other children played.
Cadet was a "restavek"--a Haitian Creole term that means "staying with." It describes children whose parents, often poor, give them to wealthier families as servants in hopes the children will have food, schooling and a better life. The practice is widely accepted in Haiti.
Cadet, now a teacher in Cincinnati, says restaveks are "slave children," and he is leading a campaign to rid Haiti of the practice.
He has written a book titled "Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American," in which he recounts the labor, neglect and violence that began when he was a young boy. ("Restavek" is the modern spelling.)
UNICEF Monitoring Restavek System
Cadet says he has met many Haitians who acknowledge isolated cases of abuse in the restavek system but believe it often helps poor children who otherwise would be worse off.
"My goal is to make the term 'restavek' a social taboo," he said in an interview. "Once you do that, the system will end."
The use of children as domestic workers in Haiti has drawn the attention of UNICEF and other groups that monitor children's rights. In 1998, the U.N. agency estimated the number of restaveks in Haiti at 300,000.
"Domestic labor and mistreatment of restaveks often go hand-in-hand," the UNICEF study said. "These children live in painful conditions."
Restaveks are beaten more frequently than other children, and young girls working as restaveks are often sexually abused, said Dr. Louis Roy, the official ombudsman of Haiti.
"Must we put a stop to it?" he said. "There is legislation. But it can't be implemented until the social situation improves."
Restavek children are handed over to their new families when they are old enough to work, often between 6 and 10 years old. Cadet joined the family at age 4 and began working at 7.
Poverty is the primary force driving children into unpaid servitude in Haiti--the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and among the poorest nations in the world.
