PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Living in a tent after  an earthquake left a million Haitians in the streets, Melila  Thelusma says she cannot support her two daughters and is ready  to give them away to foreigners if she can find a good home for  them.

Despite her desperation, Thelusma said she would never turn 11-year-old Gaelle and 6-year-old Christelle over to a Haitian  family, as tens of thousands of other poor parents have done.

“Not a Haitian family. Haitians will make them suffer,”  Thelusma, 39, said. “They … force the child to work like an  animal. They don’t really take care of them.”

Deeply ingrained in the culture of the impoverished former  slave colony, the practice of poor families giving away  children to wealthier acquaintances or relatives is known in  the native Creole as “restavek,” from the French words rester  avec, or “to stay with.”

Critics call it slavery.

The children, they said, are taken in as servants, forced  to work without pay, isolated from other children in the  household and seldom sent to school.

“A restavek is a child placed in domestic slavery,” said  Jean-Robert Cadet, a former restavek who now runs a foundation  to improve the lives of restavek children  (www.restavekfreedom.org).

After the Jan. 12 earthquake, the Haitian government warned  that child traffickers could take advantage of the ensuing  chaos to prey on vulnerable children. The well-publicized drama  surrounding 10 U.S. missionaries caught trying to spirit 33  children over the border seemed to reinforce the threat.