San Antonio Escorts: Social workers play detective to reunite families
February 17, 2010The case of 10 Idaho missionaries accused of kidnapping 33 children when they tried to take them to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic called attention to the “premature exodus” of Haitian children, Paul says. At least 20 of the children have living parents. The children are at an SOS home temporarily. The missionaries are in jail, awaiting the next step in their case.
At least 157 unaccompanied children have been listed.
Fontaine expects to trace the families of hundreds of children.
UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s advocacy agency, estimates there were 380,000 orphans in Haiti before the quake. The agency estimates an additional 173,000 were restavecs, living apart from their families, doing domestic work for no pay.
Fontaine says it is too soon to estimate how many were orphaned by the disaster.
The country has a history of trafficking and exploiting children, says Lisa Laumann of Save the Children, which is working in Haiti to reunite children with their families. Unaccompanied children are the most at risk for being forced into prostitution or unpaid labor, she says.
See the full article from “USA Today”