Haitian community leaders in the United States have called for government help to curb what they say is the growing practice of child slavery.

The appeal follows the case of a twelve-year old Haitian girl, who has been taken into care in south Florida after complaining she had been sexually abused for four years by a member of the family she was working for.

In Haiti, poor children known in creole as restaveks are often taken in by wealthier families as domestic servants, and in return are provided with food, shelter and an education.

But community leaders say that in practice many young girls end up being abused, and that the phenomenon is now being exported to the US, which is home to an estimated one million Haitians.