Father of Asian maltreated, in a way (5,1,7)
I believe the answer is:
after a fashion
'in a way' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'father of asian maltreated' is the wordplay.
'maltreated' indicates anagramming the letters.
'father'+'of'+'asian'='fatherofasian'
'fatherofasian' is an anagram of 'AFTER A FASHION'.
(Other definitions for after a fashion that I've seen before include "Following a fad" , "To some extent but not perfectly" , "In some manner but not very well" , "In some (unsatisfactory) manner" , "like many boutique shoppers?" .)