Street children in Haiti face all kinds of challenges as part of everyday life, but in a war crisis, those kids become war children. Children without stable families or living situations are frequently co-opted into gangs, and that poses a serious problem not just for the kids themselves but for the nation of Haiti as a whole.

The abuse war children face is different from the abuse common among restavek children. Abused restavek children are typically affected on an individual level, but they are generally in situations where they are clothed, fed, and with a roof over their head. War kids are abused on a much larger level, as a result of the system they’re forced into and with which they’re made complicit.

Haitian children in any situation, especially abusive ones (whether restavek slavery or gang warfare), are conditioned to associate their experiences with the substance of their soul. The animistic mentality that controls Haitian Vodou suggests that if good things happen, you’re a good person. Conversely, a person in this culture might also assume that if bad things happen, their soul is bad. The cultural attitude is that we get what we deserve, and the situations a person falls into bear a direct correlation with their essential nature.

This is the mentality we see in war children. I’m just a bad guy, so I do bad things. That’s just who I am. Satan’s message to the war child, to all of us, is you’re irreversibly bad. No one can take you out of your worst situation, and in Vodou, the best you can get is approval from the evil spirits who want you to do evil things. It’s a system of worship that’s completely counter to God. God gives you approval for trusting Him and doing good, but the evil spirits give you approval for doing bad. In order to receive approval, you need to continue to do evil, which is so counter to the truth. That’s the lie Satan has told war children. It’s a warped value system that takes a huge psychological toll.

We see something similar with our rescued restavek children. They tend to have the same mentality, thinking things like, My parents gave me away because I’m not a good kid. That is a lie from the enemy who wants to hold us captive. It is this dark deception—for the war child or the restavek—where we bring God’s message of hope. We’re all dead in our sins initially, but God doesn’t want us to stay there. He has forgiven us. We are His when we run to Him for grace.

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