Toon Cox

In 2000, K.U.Leuven recognized Sister Jeanne Devos with an honorary doctorate in recognition of her fight against the exploitation and abuse of child slaves in India. This year, the university is going a step further by establishing the Jeanne Devos Foundation, intended to support the operation of the National Domestic Workers Movement that she founded.

Professor Peter Adriaenssens is attached to the Child Psychiatry Department and the Confidential Centre on Child Abuse and Neglect, and specializes in the field of services for traumatized children. He was involved with the foundation from the beginning. “In her 72nd year, Jeanne Devos sleeps in an apartment with four steel bunk-beds. When she sleeps, she wears headphones so she is always available. Stickers are found everywhere in India on lamp-posts with the emergency numbers for house slaves. When their bosses are sleeping, they call Jeanne and her colleagues to report problems or simply to pour out their hearts. There are enough volunteers to answer these calls. Real estate is however very scarce, and thus very expensive. Therefore, there is a shortage of infrastructure for receiving children who flee their bosses.”

Group Therapy
“A child needs security, affection, and schooling, and also needs a chance to play. Usually, house slaves don’t receive these at all. For this reason, we offer therapy in the shelters. But because house labour often makes the difference between bread on the table or not, there are many children who are forced to keep working. For these, the National Domestic Workers Movement has organised quasi group-therapy meetings, where working children can congregate each week for two hours. There are about 750, and they learn and sing and play together. During these two hours, they can feel sheltered. They need not fear that adults are going to do strange things to them. Alongside the therapeutic aspect, these meetings ensure a kind of social control. The bosses of the children now watch their step, because they can indeed find themselves in trouble if it comes to light that the child has injuries. Groups of 750 children are naturally enormous if you compare them with our work here in Leuven, where we offer trauma support in communities of eight.”
“Jeanne’s network is a multicultural cooperation between Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and other faiths. With her perseverance and diplomacy, she succeeds in creating motion within Indian society and policy. There is more and more recognition of her work. She has already received visits from Princess Mathilde and Prime Minister Verhofstadt, and in 2005 she was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Sleeping next to the trash bin
During her studies — home economics and psychology in Leuven, and orthopsychology in Utrecht — Sister Jeanne Devos had already dreamed of travelling to India. In 1963, she left for Mumbai. Sister Devos wants to bring about important structural changes in Indian society.
“Normally, demonstrations in India begin only around 10 o’clock in the morning,” says Devos. “But the day when a member of the movement found out that the neighbour’s house slave was raped, murdered, and hung, that changed. Then, people were already standing on the street at 6 o’clock. This was the beginning of what lead to last August’s ban on child labour in private homes and the hospitality sector. We assume that people have rights, and that they must get these. We carry out action not for but with the domestic workers.”
“We have transitional shelters, where we prepare escaped children for their return to their families, and have therapy sessions for children still remaining house slaves. Moreover, we also provide information in rural areas. Often, parents think that children who go to the city do alright. We explain to them that these children usually end up as house slaves. To prevent child migration to the city, we have established self-help groups that make and sell artisanal products. Thus, they can set some money aside and later start up a business.”
“And for the children that still depart, we explain how to deal with city life. We teach them, for instance, how a gas cooker works. Further, it is of the utmost importance that they stay in contact with their family. But many cannot read or write. Sometimes people think that house slaves are better off than street children because they at least have a roof above their head. But often they sleep on the floor next to the trash bin surrounded by cockroaches. Street children, usually boys, at least have their freedom, something taken away from house slaves, usually girls.”
“With the K.U.Leuven foundation, I hope to be able to help as many needy children as possible. We need buildings to receive escaped house slaves. Our head office is only a one-room apartment, and thus could be a bit bigger. But the children come first.”