id: 3844401
A Child with disabilities at lunchtime at Saint Louis Orione Center in Bombouaka, Togo (West Africa). The center takes in around 70 children, mostly in neglect, with severe and profound physical or intellectual disabilities and provides specialized and personalized care to try to improve their quality of life.
Children with disabilities (especially girls) run a high risk of being physical, emotional and sexual abused as well as being abandoned by their families. There is a perception by their communities that the disabilities are due to a divine punishment, the result of the sins committed by the parents, of an act of the devil, or that the child is a sorcerer. Minors who suffer from a disability are considered \"supernatural\", \"strangers\" or \"demons\". In some areas of the country, children with cerebral palsy are known as \"snakes\", as they lie on the ground. These little ones are drowned in the river in rituals \"for the serpent to leave.\"
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