When Michieli returned to take her daughter and maid back to Suakin, Bakhita firmly refused to leave. For three days, Michieli tried to force the issue, finally appealing to the attorney general of the King of Italy; while the superior of the Institute for baptismal candidates (catechumenate) that Bakhita attended contacted the Patriarch of Venice about her protegée's problem. On 29 November 1889, an Italian court ruled that because the British had outlawed slavery in Sudan before Bakhita's birth and because Italian law had never recognized slavery as legal, Bakhita had never legally been a slave.
later she became a nun in a local Italian order, and the local people knew and loved her, so when she died, they called her a saint. (the original way to make a saint was that locals thought you were one).
The problem of human trafficking is not just as "slavery" per se: but often people working in overseas contracts find they cannot leave their job (often their passport is confiscated) and alas some of the women who thought they would be maids or nannies for families find they are expected to be sexual slaves for the men in the family. Worse, some who sign up for a job find they are actually forced into prostitution.
This is known in the Philippines, but also is a major problem with the unregulated "immigrants" which are now being trafficked across the US border by drug linked cartels.
there is a lot of criticism on right wing sites in the US about the Catholic church being involved in the resettlement of these migrants, but one reason is to stop their exploitation and to get them in touch with family or friends who are already in the USA.
Ironically, in searching Youtube for human trafficking, most of the stories seem to be from the UK. Hmm... the right wants to publicize it as a way to stop the migrations and close the border, and the left pretends there is no problem at all, nothing to see here folks just look away.
But this goes beyond the US border: in Europe, the refugees come from Africa and from the Middle East.
Some refugees are fleeing war, but most are economic refugees. So one solution is to get brokers to connect them with companies or others who would hire them.
this is how most OFW (overseas foreign workers) in the Philippines find jobs. But the exploitation of these job seekers is an ongoing problem: sometimes the recruiters take the money and run, but other times they are sent to jobs where they are exploited.
Most Filipinas working in the middle east or Asia as nannies or caregivers are cherished by their families, but not all: some have passports confiscated and are overworked or, worse, exploited by male family members for sex.
and with the covid epidemic shutting down the economy, there are many stories of out of work laborers being stranded in the Middle East with no job and no pay and no way to get home.
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