child - Haiti Observer Blog

When you lose your job and you have child support to pay, it doesn't free you from your financial obligation to your child. You will still have to make child support payments even if you no longer have a source of income. This can be a huge problem to you because failure to pay for child support can lead to many problems.

The state can revoke or deny you a passport, as well as suspend your driver's and recreational licenses. Your car can be seized, while you can be found in contempt of court should you try to hide from your former spouse and child. Worse, you can be put behind bars in some states that impose prison time for those failing to meet their child support obligations.

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When disaster strikes, children are one of the most people prone to trauma. The pictures they see and the stories they hear can double the disaster's impact on their emotional and psychological state. They can become more afraid, sad and agitated. In order to avoid this, you have to help them deal with the disaster's effects by talking to them and letting them know that everything would be okay later on.

It would be better to prevent your child from seeing disturbing images of the disaster. Don't let them watch the news that show the disaster's effects but remember that you still have to inform them of what is happening around them. Just don't be too graphic about it because you might scare them. Asking them about their feelings and worries about the situation can also help. This way, you are allowing your children to express their emotions and addressing them.

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The term used for children with this arrangement is restavek (one who stays).

Haiti suffers the reputation as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Many Haitian families cannot afford the care of their own children, so they send them to live with rich families as unpaid domestics or Restaveks.

Sometimes a restavek will live with a family, who can afford to educate them and give them adequate living conditions. If not, will use the floor as their bed and be subjected to sexual abuse.

Restaveks are domestic slaves, and the majority of them are girls, 80% of them. They perform household chores, not for pay, but in return for shelter, food, clothing, and education, usually of inferior quality. Even under optimal conditions, restaveks have inferior status in the household, even with peers and younger.

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The child slave trade has been growing exponentially during the last decade.

After landing in the streets, 2.8 million juveniles are snatched by pornographers. Nearly 1 million children are forced to prostitute themselves. What is even more horrific is their extreme youth, averaged at age 12.

Within U.S. borders, 200,000 juveniles are at peril for being exploited within the sex trade each year. It is estimated child trafficking in the world market is pulling in $12 billion plus every year, affecting 1.2 million plus children. Women and girls make up 80% of victims, half of them minors. Numbering 300,000-400,000, they are kidnapped, bought, and sold between countries for use in the sex trade business.

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The sex bondage trade most often ensnares female adult and child victims.

Forced into various kinds of sex bondage, perpetrators feed on them. The crime of sex bondage has many purposes, from single-ownership to religious ritualism, in which the sex bondage trade flourishes. Criminal syndicates, high-level government functionaries, depraved netherworld perverts, and dedicated human rights members all use victims of transnational human trafficking for sexual purposes. The international sex bondage trade is a world-wide phenomenon, particularly in South and East Asia.

Commercial sexual exploitation of children embraces activities such as "turning out" child prostitutes, and using them as fodder for child pornography and sex tourism. Any and all kinds of sexual activities are perpetrated on children, some of young as six. Sex bondage can occur as a tangential activity for debt bondage and transportation of brides for forced marriages.

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Paul Waggoner who is an American construction worker was arrested in Haiti and charged with kidnapping a Haitian child back in February while doing volunteering work. The child's father alleged that Paul Waggoner abducted his child after his death was announced.

According to the report, Paul Waggoner who is 32 years old, has been in Haiti to help victims of the earthquake. He allegedly kidnapped the child back in February from a Haitian Community Hospital in Petion-Ville

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Ten Americans detained in Port-au-Prince on child trafficking charges. Will these people be treated like Haitian prisoners or will they have special preferences. So far, according to these pictures, the detainees affiliated with Baptist churches in Meridian and Twin Falls, Idaho have not been in a four star hotel in Haiti.

Carla Thompson lay on a bed in a scorching jail cell about 8 feet by 5 feet, her ankles bandaged from infected mosquito bites. Sitting on a dirty concrete floor in the cell, another detainee, Corinna Lankford, has a frustrated look on her face.

The detainees, most of whom are arrived in the chaotic days after the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake. They were detained as they tried to take 33 Haitian children whom the Baptists had said were orphaned into the neighboring Dominican Republic.

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