London: Three traumatised women have been rescued from a London home after one called a charity to say she’d been held against her will for more than three decades, Scotland Yard said on Thursday.
A 67-year-old man and a 67-year-old woman were arrested on Thursday at a home in south London as part of an investigation into slavery and domestic servitude, cops said.
In April this year, three people, including an Indian-origin woman, were found guilty of mistreating and abusing a mother of four from Hyderabad.
The Hyderabad woman, who cannot be named, had moved to the UK in 2005 and was badly abused and mistreated by three families with whom she worked as a nanny and domestic worker.
The woman, who spoke no English when she arrived in the UK on domestic worker visa, was subjected to several years of terrifying cruelty and violence in three different households in London by three couples she worked for. The mother of four, believed to be about 40-years-old, was treated like a slave and was sexually abused.
The trial included witness statements from Hyderabad via video link.
Earlier this year, three women, who were imprisoned in a house in Cleveland, Ohio, for more than a decade, were freed.
No details have been released by the Scotland Yard about the circumstances of the three women and how they were kept as slaves in the south London home.
The British investigation comes after a charity contacted the Met police in October to report that a woman had phoned its helpline to say she’d been held unwillingly for more than 30 years. The catalyst for the call was a television documentary on forced marriages, according to the police.
