Slaves on our streets: beatings, torture and enforced labour – three shocking convictions for modern slavery in the UK

One was called the 'worst case of modern-day slavery ever uncovered in Britain'

Aravindan Balakrishnan was jailed last year for 23 years for rape and false imprisonment

Sumara Iram​

Ms Iram’s husband became the first person in Britain to be jailed for keeping his wife as a slave.

Ms Iram was never allowed to step out of the house alone

The 29-year-old , whose marriage to Safraz Ahmed was arranged in Pakistan in 2012, was tortured for 18 months before raising the alarm. She was beaten regularly and feared for her life as she endured an existence of “violence, intimidation, aggression and misery”.

Safraz Ahmed was the first person in Britain to be jailed for keeping his wife as a slave

Ahmed, of Charlton, told her he had married her so she could “look after his mother and his house”.

Even when in desperation she took an overdose of painkillers, instead of being taken to hospital she was told to be sick before being taken to a wedding. He was jailed for two years in 2016 after being convicted of holding a person in servitude and assault causing actual bodily harm.

In a victim impact statement, Ms Iram, said: “Because the beatings happened regularly and for such small things I felt worthless. I was never allowed to step out of the house alone and I was not allowed to make friends. I felt like their prisoner. I cooked, I cleaned, I washed, I ironed, looked after other people’s children and when things were not to the liking of the family I was punished by beatings. I felt that there was only one purpose of my life and that was to serve this family.”

Katy Morgan-Davies

Katy Morgan-Davies was born and raised inside a Maoist cult in Brixton

Police have described Katy Morgan-Davies as the victim of the “worst case of modern-day slavery ever uncovered in Britain”.

She was born and raised for 30 years inside a Maoist cult in Brixton, led by her father Aravindan Balakrishnan, who was jailed last year for 23 years for rape and false imprisonment.

Balakrishnan, 76, called himself Comrade Bala and brainwashed his followers into thinking he had god-like powers. Southwark Crown Court heard that he convinced them he could read their minds.

During his trial, Ms Morgan-Davies, 34, said she was beaten and banned from singing nursery rhymes, going to school or making friends.

She had been brainwashed to believe her own behaviour was to blame for natural disasters such as earthquakes, calling the situation “horrible, so dehumanising and degrading”.

She said: “I used to think ‘God, if the whole world is going to be like this, what way out is there? How am I going to live? I cannot live in this.’

“So I used to think that the best way would be to die.”

When she finally managed to escape the cult in 2013 after memorising the number for an anti-slavery charity she saw on the news, she had the social skills of a six-year-old. She was unable to cross the road or use basic appliances.

The judge said Balakrishnan had treated his daughter like “an experiment”, adding: “Your treatment of her from her birth to the age of 26 was a catalogue of mental and physical abuse.”

Ofonime Sunday Inuk

Mr Inuk was 14 and an orphan when he was lured away from Nigeria with the promise of a better life in the UK.

But when the teenager arrived in the west London home of NHS doctor Emmanuel Edet and his wife, he was enslaved.

Emmanuel Edet and his wife, Antan were each sentenced to six years in prison in 2015

His passport was confiscated and for more than two decades he was forced to work 17 hours a day, cooking, cleaning and helping to raise the couple’s sons, with his bed a thin foam mattress in the hallway of the Perivale property.

The thin foam mattress Mr Inuk was forced to sleep on

Edet, 62, and his wife, Antan, 59, were sentenced to six years in prison each in 2015 after being convicted of cruelty to a child under 16, servitude and assisting unlawful immigration.

Mr Inuk, now 41, became scared of the couple after realising they would not pay him or send him to school.

But with no official paperwork, no money and nowhere else to go, he had no choice but to stay.

In a police interview, he said he was known as a “house boy”, adding: “My role is to stay in the house ... I always do everything in the house, sir ... clean, cook, wash car, the gardening, ironing ... like a slave. That’s called slavery.”

Mr Inuk, who has suffered psychological trauma as a result of his mistreatment, was finally rescued after hearing the name of a slavery charity on the radio one day and managing to contact them.

He said: “I just worked from when I woke up to when I went to bed.

“I’m not going to get my life back, it’s gone now.”

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