For several years, Rama was virtually invisible to the outside world.

In 2003, she was sold by her late husband’s family in southern India to work for a doctor in California. She was effectively housebound, working without pay for more than three years, with no real idea where she was.

“Every day I would hear, ‘You don’t have papers, we could do anything to you,'” she says.

She was eventually able to escape, working a series of other jobs below minimum wage in other doctors’ homes for a few more years.

In 2012, she got help from the South Asian Network, or SAN. That’s when she was able to get her T Visa, for victims of trafficking.

Listen to the full interview in the audio player above.