Rani Hong was born in southern India, where she had a normal childhood with her mom, dad, and four siblings.Yet when her father became ill, a well-respected woman in their neighborhood offered to help. She asked Rani’s mother if would be willing to send one of her children to live with her.And so, at 7-years-old, Rani went off to live with this woman, though her mother and siblings often visited. Then, after around six or eight months, the woman sold Rani to a man across the state border in Tamil Nadu.Held captive with other trafficked children, Rani says they were forced to work 12 hours a day at a brick factory. At night she was put in a cage, part of what is called “seasoning for submission,” where a child is abused and tortured until they submit to the will of their master. They barely gave me any food, I was malnourished and beaten and became so broken down that I was of no value. Because I couldn’t, he shipped me out of India and into Canada and then into the United States. When Rani turned 28 she decided to go back to India on a quest to find her birth mother, where through a “series of events that seem like miracles I was reunited with my family, my mom.” Her mother said she had spent the last 21 years relentlessly searching for her.That’s when Rani decided she needed to become an advocate and take on child trafficking.