U.K. Court finds Nigerian Doctor and nurse wife guilty of keeping man as slave for 24 years (photos)

A British couple was found guilty on Tuesday of 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.