Wicked and mean British couple
was found guilty on Tuesday for keeping a Nigerian immigrant enslaved for
more than two decades, forcing him to work for no pay and threatening
him with deportation if he tried to escape, prosecutors said.
Emanuel
Edet, 61, and Antan Edet, 58, held their victim captive from the time
he was brought to Britain when he was 14 years old, said the Crown
Prosecution Service.
The husband
and wife were convicted at Harrow Crown Court in northwest London on
charges of child cruelty, slavery and assisting in illegal immigration.
They
had told the teen when they brought him from Nigeria in 1989 that they
would pay him and provide him with an education, prosecutors said.
Instead,
the victim, now 40, was forced to cook, clean, garden and care for the
couple's children without any pay for up to 17 hours a day, they said.
He was forced to eat alone and typically slept on hallway floors, they
said.
He got no education
and had only very limited contact with his family and the outside
world. The couple took his passport, and he had no identity documents,
prosecutors said.
Prosecutor
Damaris Lakin said the Edets told their captive he would be arrested as
an illegal immigrant and deported if he left the house and contacted
police.
"He believed this
and felt trapped and completely dependent on the Edets," Lakin said in a
statement. "Emanuel and Antan Edet have cruelly robbed this victim of
24 years of his life. They have treated him with complete contempt."
"This was a shocking case of modern day slavery," he said.
The convictions
came on the first day of a two-day Trust Women conference in London on
women's rights and human trafficking held by the Thomson Reuters
Foundation.
Prosecutors said the
Edets had changed the victim's name and added him to their family
passport as their son when they brought him into Britain.
Reuters UK
No comments:
Post a Comment