From Abuser to Defender of Children:

A Former Restavek Tells Her Story of Transformation

Marie Lourdes Despiro is willing to admit that she was a violent person. In fact, Despiro will tell you that she was “very violent,” describing herself even as “angry and volatile.”

“Every child I encountered I corrected harshly,” Despiro said, speaking of both her own children and those of others. “I would beat them hard too because everything that was done to me I was going to do to them,” she added. Despiro, 42, learned brutality at a young age when she became one among the hundreds of thousands of Haitian children forced into slavery by desperate parents who believe life as a restavèk is the only means of survival for their child. “What made me violent too was how people used me. I was like someone who was a restavèk – that’s what I was,” she said.

In Beyond Borders-sponsored 'train-the-trainer' sessions facilitators like these are learning techniques they can use to promote children's rights.

Escape from the legacy of violence learned at a young age finally came for Despiro earlier this year when she joined a Beyond Borders adult education program focused on children’s rights. “I found the ‘Education is a Conversation’ (ESK) group and I changed, I truly changed,” Despiro said. “I became a different person.” Beyond Borders and its sister organization in Haiti, Limyè Lavi, sponsor the ESK program in the tent camps of Port-au-Prince and in rural communities in southeast Haiti. For two hours a day every week for 22 weeks, Despiro gathered with 10 to 15 adults for a guided discussion of children’s rights meant to both raise awareness and create leaders in communities– leaders who are emboldened to defend kids.

Two women being trained by Beyond Borders in how to promote children's rights.

Providing ordinary Haitians like Despiro with the skills they need to intervene with neighbors who are abusing restavèk children – or any child for that matter – is a key objective of the ESK effort. “I learned in the ESK program that children have rights and I’ve become another person now,” Despiro said. “ESK has given me so much in my life. Haiti’s needed this for so long, yet it couldn’t be found.”  Despiro says she’d like to see a neighborhood-wide seminar on children’s rights and is already speaking out when she sees children being abused. “I feel like I am on a mission now in my community. What I faced, I don’t want others to have to face,” she said. What Despiro faced is common to children living in slavery: denied schooling and forced to perform menial household chores, Despiro was beaten repeatedly and ran away from the family that held her only to be returned to her abusers by her mother. “But I ran away again,” Despiro said, "because I didn’t think I could stand another beating.” Since becoming part of the ESK child rights program, Despiro has challenged abusive adults in her own neighborhood. Despiro spoke of a recent case in which a father was abusing his own 12-year-old son. “We told him, even though you are a lawyer, if you continue to treat the boy like this we will find a way to hold you accountable before the law.”