82-Year-Old American Woman Frees Child Slaves In Nepal

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According to the non-profit group Free The Slaves there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world right now -- more than at any time in recorded history.

Olga Murray greets one of the children her organization is helping.

(ABC)

Bijani told us that she spends her day cleaning the house, making tea and helping her Mrs. Oli prepare meals. She doesn't go to school. And, she said, she misses her parents and sisters, who are back home in rural Nepal.

Mrs. Oli insisted, "We love her like our own daughter."

Preventing Servitude

While Bijani bore no outward signs of abuse, many former kamlaris have reported being beaten, humiliated and raped.

Enter Olga Murray and her colleagues. They have come up with a way of preventing parents from sending their children into servitude.

"We say to the family: If you allow your girl to come home, or not sell her again … we're going to give you either a baby piglet or a baby goat. And we will put your daughter in school and pay all her school-related expenses. Everything. Which comes out to about $50 a year."

These seemingly small gestures -- paying for school and giving families animals they can later sell for a profit -- can remove the economic incentive to sell daughters into slavery.

In the areas where this program has been tried, Murray says the kamlari system has essentially been eradicated.

"I can't tell you how satisfying it is," Murray said.