Child Abuse Negl

BackgroundThere have been estimates that over 150,000 Haitian children are living in servitude. Child domestic servants who perform unpaid labor are referred to as \u201crestav\ue8ks.\u201d Restav\ue8ks are often stigmatized, prohibited from attending school, and isolated from family placing them at higher risk for experiencing violence. In the absence of national data on the experiences of restav\ue8ks in Haiti, the study objective was to describe the sociodemographic characteristics of restav\ue8ks in Haiti and to assess their experiences of violence in childhood.MethodsThe Violence Against Children Survey was a nationally representative, cross-sectional household survey of 13\u201324 year olds (n = 2916) conducted May\u2013June 2012 in Haiti. A stratified three-stage cluster design was used to sample households and camps containing persons displaced by the 2010 earthquake. Respondents were interviewed to assess lifetime prevalence of physical, emotional, and sexual violence occurring before age 18. Chi-squared tests were used to assess the association between having been a restav\ue8k and experiencing violence in childhood.FindingsIn this study 17.4% of females and 12.2% of males reported having been restav\ue8ks before age 18. Restav\ue8ks were more likely to have worked in childhood, have never attended school, and to have come from a household that did not have enough money for food in childhood. Females who had been restav\ue8ks in childhood had higher odds of reporting childhood physical (OR 2.04 [1.40\u20132.97]); emotional (OR 2.41 [1.80\u20133.23]); and sexual violence (OR 1.86 [95% CI 1.34\u20132.58]) compared to females who had never been restav\ue8ks. Similarly, males who had ever been restav\ue8ks in childhood had significantly increased odds of emotional violence (OR 3.06 [1.99\u20134.70]) and sexual violence (OR 1.85 [1.12\u20133.07]) compared to males who had never been restav\ue8ks, but there was no difference in childhood physical violence.InterpretationThis study demonstrates that child domestic servants in Haiti experience higher rates of childhood violence and have less access to education and financial resources than other Haitian children. These findings highlight the importance of addressing both the lack of human rights law enforcement and the poor economic circumstances that allow the practice of restav\ue8k to continue in Haiti.CC999999/Intramural CDC HHS/United States2018-06-25T00:00:00Z29112856PMC6016389vault:3046