A DOCTOR AND his wife have been jailed for 12 years for keeping a man as a slave in their London home.
Doctor Emmanuel Edet, 61, a phlebotomist, and his wife Antan, 58, a senior nurse, both of Haymill Close in Perivale, were sentenced today for keeping the Nigerian victim as a slave, child cruelty and assisting unlawful immigration.
The couple took the boy from his home without his family’s permission in 1989, when he was 13.
He agreed to be their “house boy” on the basis that he would be paid and receive schooling, but they made him carry out arduous, unpaid labour for 24 years.
He was forced to work for around 17 hours every day at their home. The Edets kept notes on the standard of his work, which included rigorous cleaning, caring for their two children and cooking for the family.
They controlled every aspect of his life, from what he could wear to when he could leave the house, and demanded that he only spoke to them in Nigerian but to the other children solely in English.
The Edets claimed they had adopted him as their son but in reality they forbade him from even eating in the same room as family members. He was not allowed to enter most of the rooms in the house unless it was to clean them, and they made him sleep on a dirty piece of foam on the hallway floor.
They verbally abused him, calling him a “parasite”, and convinced him that if he went to the police, he would be arrested for being an illegal immigrant.
They had controlled him so effectively that even when they went away for weeks, he did not run away.
In December 2013, the Edets returned to Nigeria for Christmas, leaving the victim alone at their home in Perivale for several weeks. Before leaving, they set up a remotely controlled CCTV camera in the hallway so they could monitor him.
The victim, having recently seen media reports about modern slavery, realised the life he was being made to lead was wrong and emailed the charity Hope for Justice from a computer at the house. The charity forwarded the email to Met Police, who helped the man get support. They arrested the couple three months later.
Detective Chief Inspector Phil Brewer of the Met Police Trafficking and Kidnap Unit said that the victim has moved on.
Today the victim is living a new life in the UK. He has a job, a home with his own bed and freedom to move, and he is studying.
“While he will never fully overcome what happened during those 24 years, he is determined to make the most of the rest of his life and today’s conviction will help him feel he can do that. In his own words, he has hope and a future now.”
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