Remember the Nigerian doctor and
his nurse wife who kept a man in forced servitude for almost a
quarter of a century after illegally bringing him to Britain. (Read here)They have
both been jailed for six years.Former NHS
obstetrician Emmanuel Edet, 61, and midwife Antan Edet, 58, kept
fellow Nigerian Ofonime Sunday Inuk as a ‘houseboy’ after telling
immigration officials he was their teenage son when they arrived Britain in 1989.
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| The foam that the victim was forced to sleep on in the hallway |
Over the next
24 years he worked unpaid up to 17 hours a day looking after the
couple’s two sons, cooking, cleaning and gardening.He was also
forced to sleep on a hall floor for long periods of time. He
eventually managed to alert a charity to his plight after the couple
went to Nigeria for Christmas in 2013 and they were arrested the
following March.
Sentencing
the couple at Harrow Crown Court today Judge Graham said their
treatment of Mr Inuk, now 40, left him ‘conditioned’ to his
plight.Judge Arran
said: ‘He was conditioned to the extent that 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.
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| The Edets’ notes on the victim’s chores |
Dr and Mrs
Edet, from Perivale, north west London, were found guilty by a jury
last month of cruelty to a child under 16, servitude and assisting
unlawful immigration.
They remained
impassive as the sentences were handed down to them.
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