Of Haitian Bondage

It's that stark dilemma for most restaveks--slavery or privation--that allows their masters to rationalize the practice as more benevolent than benighted. "She's like a member of our family," insists Micheline Dornevil, 43, whom Ania serves as well as Dornevil's five children. "No, none of this restavek stuff. What we've done is help her." Romer often gets the same response from restavek "hosts" in Miami. "They actually think they're doing a positive thing for these children," she says. "And if they bring them to the U.S., ooh, then they really think they're doing a good deed."

As it turns out, however, being a restavek in the Haitian community in the U.S.--where immigrants acquire a higher self-image--is usually a source of more shame than it is in Haiti. Whereas restaveks in Haiti spoke freely with TIME, all the Miami restaveks interviewed pleaded that their real names not be used and their photos not be taken.

Still, that the community is acknowledging the practice at all is a start, and a sign that Haitian Americans, like Cuban Americans before them, are beginning the passage from huddled refugees to more confident immigrants and players in the U.S. "We are not going to let Haitian traditions like restavek flourish here because we know now that America is the great equalizer among us," says attorney Phillip Brutus, who in November was elected Florida's first Haitian-American state legislator. "We're making giant leaps from where we were 10 years ago in that sense."

Back in Haiti, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former priest who took up his second term of office earlier this month, has promised to address the keeping of restaveks--which is technically illegal there. In an interview with TIME, Aristide called the practice "one of the cancers on our social body in Haiti that keep democracy from growing." He pledged to enforce the law but noted that "this first requires an intense education policy, because it is so ingrained in Haiti that too many people don't even know they are breaking the law." At least now, word is finally getting to Haitians like Michele's aunt that slavery has no place in America.