08 May, 2015

NIGERIAN COUPLE KEEPS ANOTHER NIGERIAN AS SLAVE FOR 24 YEARS IN UK

An Nigeria doctor and his wife in the United Kingdom enslaved a man in his home for 24 years after smuggling him into Britain as a child, a court heard on Wednesday.
Edet, 60, and his wife, Antan, 58, a senior hospital nurse, are accused of stripping Ofonime Inuk of his passport and making him work up to 17 hours a day. 
The Nigerian orphan was left to bring up their two sons as they travelled across Britain working for a series of NHS trusts.
On Wednesday, Mr Inuk, 39, confronted the pair for the first time since allegedly escaping their West London home in 2013.
He told a jury at Harrow Crown Court in UK he had to sleep on the floor and was barred from using many rooms except to clean them.

He described how he was scared of the couple after realising they would not pay him or send him to school. In a soft voice, he said he was not ‘free’, adding: "I could only take the children to the park, that was the only time I could take them out."
In a police interview, he said he was known as a ‘house boy’, adding: "My role is to stay in the house ... I always do everything in the house, sir … clean, cook, wash car, the gardening, ironing … or maybe like a slave. That’s called slavery."
Dr Edet, an obstetrician and gynaecologist, and his wife are being prosecuted under modern anti-slavery legislation.
The jury was told Mr Inuk escaped after hearing about another case in the media while the couple travelled to Nigeria for Christmas. He contacted a charity which tipped off police who were stunned to find him alone in their £450,000 four-bedroom terrace home in Perivale, monitored by a CCTV camera.
He told them his ordeal began when he was taken under the wing of the Edet family aged 12. He was the oldest of eight children. His family had fallen into poverty when his father died and he willingly went to work for the Edets in Lagos, Nigeria, being paid £2 or £3 a month.
A short time later, the family moved to Israel and then, when he was 14, to Britain. They brought him into the country by changing his name to their surname and falsely adding him to their passports.
They stayed at addresses, including hospital accommodation, in Chatham, Scarborough, Walsall and London.
Roger Smart, prosecuting, said Mr Inuk slept on the kitchen floor on a dirty foam mattress thrown out by a hospital. He was expected to get up first and begin cleaning the house, but was told to sweep instead of using a vacuum cleaner because it was too noisy.
Mr Inuk was also forced to wash clothes by hand because the Edets said it was too expensive to run the washing machine.
He always ate by himself, kept his few possessions in a single bag and was not allowed to sit in the front room or go upstairs.
Mr Smart said the couple "to all intents and purposes owned him, controlling nearly every aspect of his life down to his very name.
"Over a period in excess of 20 years, they have deprived him of his identity, his rights to education and freedom of movement and the money he should have received. He has no means of returning to Nigeria. He was entirely dependent on them."

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