Rani

After being kidnapped as a young girl, Rani Hong has been active in the fight against human trafficking for a decade. While she already had reason enough to fight back, she gained renewed inspiration from her four children. “If I look at it from the perspective of a mother’s point of view, I would do everything I could to protect my children from being exploited,” the Olympia, Wash., woman said of her children, ages 6 to 12.

Millions are, with countless children among the estimated 27 million held captive worldwide. That means there are more slaves today than were taken from Africa during 300 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It’s a problem that has been spotlighted in numerous articles, films and books. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) estimates between 800,000 and 900,000 people are trafficked annually.

“This is such a huge business the (U.S.) State Department estimates it will be the number one crime in the world by 2010,” said Rani, co-founder of the Tronie Foundation with her husband, Trong. It seeks to raise awareness and provide aid and comfort to victims.

Among the foundations’ charitable projects have been trips to Fiji to build homes for people who are at risk of being forced into slavery. Last year it opened Nell’s House (named after the woman who adopted Rani) in the Northwest, providing shelter to a dozen people who have been exploited.

SOLD INTO SLAVERY

Rani’s real-life experience with trafficking originated with a childhood nightmare. Her dying father was too ill to support his family. When a woman approached her mother with a promise to provide her daughter a free education, she accepted. Instead, the visitor sold Rani to a child broker. She was 7 years old.

“It was very difficult for me,” she said. “My life was good with my mom. I would cry and cry for my mother and they’d tell me to shut up. I was very lonely and afraid.”

Before long, she looked so broken her captor decided nobody would be interested in her. Through his connections, he arranged for an international adoption.

FIGHTING BACK

Children in Rani's hometown village

Seven years after Rani married in 1992, she took a fateful journey to India with a friend of her adoptive mother’s. On that trip she would be reunited with her birth mother and learn more about what her childhood. It would be the first of several fact-finding missions that included talks with villagers and other research.

Eventually, she saw a parcel of land purchased with the money earned from her slavery. She looked over the rice paddies and wept.

“I didn’t get involved in the fight against trafficking until I took that first trip to India,” Rani said. “On the way back God (told me) He wanted me to share the great things He had done in my life. He wanted me to be a voice for the victims.”

Rani did just that. Her testimony persuaded Washington legislators to make their state the first with laws against human trafficking. After years of working with legislators and speaking for other organizations, in 2006 she and her husband formed the Tronie Foundation.

Testifying for Washington legislators

While she has a more public presence as the group’s spokesperson, her husband directs their building projects. The foundation is based in the offices of Tronie Homes, the luxury home building business Trong formed in 1997.

Although awareness of human trafficking has increased in recent years, the situation is worsening amid the global economic slowdown, Rani said. “People are trying to profit more easily,” she says. “It’s a growing problem. The potential is increasing. It makes our work that much more worthwhile. We need funds to help us do that.”

Rani said there are many things people can do, from electing leaders who will help put an end to trafficking to writing letters to congress, state legislators and news media. She also suggests keeping an eye out for hotel maids, laborers and other service workers who seem frightened. Once, when members of a Long Island church noticed Peruvian laborers coming to services were overly shy, they alerted authorities, who uncovered trafficking.

WEB

• Tronie Foundation
• Free the Slaves
• International Justice Mission
• Shared Hope International
• The Home Foundation

RANI’S MUST-HAVES

• Harriet Tubman, a 19th century abolitionist, humanitarian and Union spy during the Civil War.
• The Road to Freedom by historian Catherine Clinton, which chronicles Tubman’s life.
• The life of Martin Luther King, Jr.