Human Predators Stalk Haiti's Vulnerable Kids

Mia Pean's heart sank last week when she saw the Toyota pickup truck cruising the debris-cluttered streets of Leogane, ground zero for the earthquake that has devastated Haiti. Each time the driver saw a child — especially a young teen — he would stick his head out of the window and shout, "Manje, manje," Creole for "eat." Pean says she watched the hungry kids, four or five at a time, hop into the back of the pickup, which then disappeared. "I saw the same man again a few days later in Carrefour," a poor suburb of Port-au-Prince, says Pean. "I asked him, 'What are you doing with all those children?' He said, 'Don't worry, we're going to put them in safe homes.' Then he drove off."

But Pean, a Haitian-American emergency consultant for the Andrew Young Foundation, doubts that altruism is the motive of the pickup driver, and others like him, who are now prowling Haiti's streets. The quake that has killed 150,000 people has left thousands of children orphaned, and vulnerable to being preyed upon by child traffickers and Haiti's shameful tradition of keeping child slaves known as restaveks. "I really fear," says Pean, "that most of the kids you see being picked up on the streets in Haiti right now are going to become restaveks or victims of sexual trafficking."

• "Traffickers targeting Haiti's children, human organs, CNN, 1/28/10.
  
• "Child Trafficking for Sexual Purposes, ECPAT, November 2008.
• ChildTrafficking.com, website.
• Child Trafficking Research Hub, UNICEF website.
• Stop Child Trafficking Now, website.