LONDON – A 40-year-old woman, said to be an “illiterate” Indian, was beaten, raped and given out-of-date food and passed between three middle-class families as a slave for many years in Britain, a daily reported.
The woman made desperate pleas for help to the Hertfordshire police as well as charities and other state agencies. But when police officers spoke to her, one of her “powerful and well-connected abusers” was used as an interpreter, The Independent said.
The woman was handed back to her “slave master”, and she was again attacked and threatened that she would be buried in the back garden of the man’s luxury home for ruining his family name.
Three people — an optician, a butcher and a secretary — were convicted of her abuse that spanned more than three years.
The woman was passed between the families, kept like a prisoner, given virtually no money and had her passport confiscated, the report said. However, when she fled, her pleas went ignored by the police and other organisations on at least 12 occasions, according to court documents.
The woman’s ordeal ended only after she was taken in by a migrant workers’ charity and human rights’ group Liberty took up her case.
“Various state agencies failed her, ignoring her repeated pleas for help, not adhering to their own investigative practice and it could be said ignoring the obvious,” Caroline Haughey, counsel for the prosecution, told the Croydon Crown Court.
The woman came to Britain in 2005 to try to make a better life and to send money to her family in India’s Hyderabad city.
When she sought help, she was threatened by her keepers. In one case, a professional interpreter told the police that the woman was “telling a lot of lies – it’s common in her country”, the court heard.
She was first taken to hospital in 2006 with a gashed foot after her “employer” named Shamina Yousuf, 33, hurled a cup at her. However, no action was taken after she was bullied her into not pursuing matters, the report said.
Courtesy IANS
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