Maltreatment means to treat someone cruelly and abuse the person emotionally. In Africa, we believe that children are a source of joy and as such they are ever welcomed irrespective of the condition that the people who welcome them live in. Owing to high rate of poverty and illiteracy, most African parents give birth indiscriminately without any planning. This results in more children than they can cater for adequately. So the vicious cycle of illiteracy and poverty continues.

The result is that these children they give birth to are usually given out at very tender ages to become house helps and in some cases are converted to modern day slaves – maltreated, brutalized and sometimes sexually abused by their supposed benefactors.