Mylouise Veillard was 10 when her mother dropped her off at an orphanage in southern Haiti and promised her a better life. For three years, Mylouise slept on a concrete floor. When she was thirsty, she walked to a community well and hauled heavy buckets of water herself. Meals were scarce, and she lost weight. She worried for her younger brother, who struggled even more than she did at the facility.
It’s a familiar story among the estimated 30,000 Haitian children who live in hundreds of orphanages where reports of forced labor, trafficking, and physical and sexual abuse are rampant. In recent months, Haiti’s government has stepped up efforts to remove hundreds of these children and reunite them with their parents or relatives as part of a massive push to shut down the institutions, the vast majority of which are privately owned.
