A man who was brought as a child to Britain for a “better life” and had been held in captive servitude for 15 years has told how the police’s failure to respond to his appeal for help condemned him to a further nine years enslavement.
Gynecologist Emmanuel Edet, 61, and his wife, senior NHS nurse, Antan, 58, brought the Ofonime Inuk to Britain in 1989 when he was 14 years old, telling him they would educate him and provide financial support. Instead they forced him to work long hours for no pay and threatened him with deportation if he tried to escape.
The couple took away his passport; adding him to their family passport as their son, Ofonime Edet, to get him into the UK. When, after fifteen years, he had reached the end of his tether and in 2004 decided to report his plight to local police, he was curtly given a lost property form and told to apply for a new passport.
A subsequent approach to his local authority proved equally unsuccessful. Staff from Ealing Social Services told Ofonime it was a “family matter” and took no action.
His ordeal finally ended in 2013 after he contacted an anti-trafficking charity using a computer at the house in Perivale, west London, after hearing allegations of modern-day slavery discussed on the radio. Ultimately a second approach to the police through the charity seemed to resonate with one particular officer, whose actions led to the arrest a subsequent conviction of the Edets for child cruelty, slavery and assisting illegal immigration. They were sentenced at Harrow Crown Court in northwest London late on Monday.
Ofonime, now 40, was forced to cook, clean, garden and care for the couple’s children, both of whom went on to receive university educations, without any pay for up to 17 hours a day. He had to eat alone and typically slept on the hallway floor.
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.
Sentencing the Edets, the judge Graham Arran said their treatment of Ofonime had left him “conditioned” to his plight.
The judge said: “He was conditioned to the extent that he did not ask for what he wanted because he expected his request to be refused. He was paid the occasional pocket money of perhaps £10. He claims that that was only at Easter and Christmas, and occasionally visitors would give him larger sums. He most certainly was not paid for the work that he was performing for you.
“The most serious aspect of your behaviour towards him was that it went on for an exceptionally long period of time, robbing him of the opportunity of leading a normal life. He suffered as a result of that treatment and has found it difficult to adjust [to] a normal life.”
The court heard that the sum he was in theory owed for his years of work ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Caroline Carberry, prosecuting, said Ofonime felt that his life had been ruined by his years in the family home. Analysing his victim impact statement, she said: “He has suffered very low self-esteem in regards to interaction with others. He spoke of feeling sad, alone and depressed. He can see no future and thought his life had been wasted and, as such, considered suicide.”
The couple were each jailed for three years for child cruelty, six for servitude and one for the immigration offence, all to run concurrently.
Although their mistreatment of Mr Inuk spanned 24 years, servitude only became an offence under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, so they were convicted and sentenced for their actions only between 2010 and 2013. However, the judge said he considered the total length of time Ofonime suffered as an aggravating feature.
