Couple jailed in UK after enslaving man for 24 years
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) – A couple were starting six-year jail terms in Britain Tuesday after keeping a Nigerian man as a slave for nearly 25 years.
Emmanuel Edet, a 61-year-old doctor, and his wife Antan Edet, a nurse aged 58, told immigration officials that Ofonime Sunday Inuk was their son when they brought him into Britain in 1989.
But they forced him to work unpaid as a “houseboy” for up to 17 hours a day, cooking, cleaning, gardening and looking after their children, London’s Harrow Crown Court heard.
In 2013, he finally managed to alert a charity to what was going on when the couple went to Nigeria for Christmas. They were arrested in March 2014.
Judge Graham Arran told the Edets that their behaviour had the effect of “robbing” their victim, now aged 40, “of the opportunity of leading a normal life.”
The couple, from northwest London, were found guilty last month of cruelty to a child under 16, servitude and assisting unlawful immigration.