LONDON, Nov 22 — Three women enslaved for 30 years in a London house were beaten during their ordeal, police said today.
The three were rescued from a house in south London and yesterday police arrested a man and a woman, both aged 67, in what they said was the worst case of domestic servitude ever to emerge in Britain.
At a news conference today, Commander Steve Rodhouse said the women were beaten and controlled emotionally.
“What we are finding is a complicated and disturbing picture of emotional control over many years,” he said.
Police also revealed that the 67-year-old non-British couple, who have now been released on bail, had been arrested before, in the 1970s, although they declined to elaborate.
Police have said that one of the enslaved women, a 30-year-old Briton, was thought to have lived her entire life in servitude although it remained unclear what her relationship was to the two people arrested or the other women, a 69-year-old Malaysian and 57-year-old Irish woman.
Rodhouse said the three women had not been trafficked and that there was no link to any other groups in Britain. The investigation, he added, was expected to take a “considerable time.”
Prime Minister David Cameron today described the case as “utterly appalling.” — Reuters
