Couple Arrested As 3 Women Are Freed from 30 Years In Captivity

A couple, both 67, were arrested on Wednesday and after police rescued three alleged ‘deeply traumatised’  slavery victims, including a 30-year-old woman who spent her whole life in servitude, have been released on bail.

Police said the British woman who was the youngest victim, had never been allowed to step into the outside world, and had possibly been born in captivity in the early 1980s. She fled with a 69-year-old Malaysian and an Irishwoman of 57, who had all been held in servitude by a couple in their 60s for three decades. There were concerns that there may be more victims.

A charity said on Wednesday night that the victims had suffered physical and mental harm, but not sexual abuse. They finally managed to escape after the Irish woman summoned courage to phone a charity which arranged their rescue.

She used a secret phone to make contact with the charity after watching an ITV Exposure documentary about forced marriages on October 9, which featured an organisation called Freedom Charity, founded by Aneeta Prem.

Detectives said they had never seen a case like it. "We have had cases where people have been held for up to 10 years, but three decades is unseen before in the United Kingdom."

Yesterday Scotland Yard swooped on the house in Lambeth, south London, and arrested a couple, on suspicion of enslaving the three women. The couple were questioned on suspicion of holding the women against their will for more than 30 years.

Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland, from the Metropolitan Police’s Human Trafficking Unit, said: "This is an extraordinary case. We don’t know whether the 30-year-old was born in the house, but she has spent her whole life, we believe, in this servitude or forced labor.

"The fact is she has spent her entire life in the control of this criminal network. We can’t say at the moment whether she is the daughter of the man we’ve arrested.

A police spokesman added: "The women we’re dealing with are deeply, deeply traumatised."

As a result of that police have been unable to interview them fully, and are still unsure of key details of the abuse, as information from them is coming out very slowly.