Condomínio de Ideias: Três mulheres permaneceram 3 décadas presas em casa de idosos londrinos / The Guardian

• Worst case Met police have seen
• 30-year-old had never seen outside world
• Two suspects in their 60s arrested
• Read story: Three women rescued after 'decades of slavery'

- Paul Owen
- theguardian.com, Thursday 21 November 2013 16.52 GMT

Police tape — Photograph: Arthur Turner/Alamy

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14m ago

Freedom Charity has put out this statement from spokeswoman Aneeta Prem:

Freedom charity, hearing about the situation of the women, took immediate action in planning their safe rescue. Facilitating their escape was achieved using utmost sensitivity and secrecy and with the safety of the women as our primary concern.

I would like to praise the outstanding work of the Freedom charity team and partners for getting the women to a place of safety.

15m ago

A source says the Freedom Charity told the police that the women said they were frightened and were scared of trying to escape from the house – hence the relatively low-key way the women left the Lambeth residence, as opposed to police raiding it.

20m ago

Vikram Dodd has more information from the Metropolitan police:

Where were the arrests made?

In Lambeth Borough.

Are the victims related to one another?

We do not believe them to be.

Are they in police custody?

No, they are in another place of safety. They are extremely traumatised which explains the discrepancy between when the Freedom Charity were contacted and when the arrests were made. We continue to work closely with the victims to gather further information.

Was the youngest victim born in the house in Lambeth?

We are not sure where she was born but she appears to have been in servitude for her entire life.

Any suggestion of sexual abuse?

There is no evidence of sexual abuse.

Have you dealt with similar cases before?

The Met's unit has dealt with cases of people held in servitude against their will for around 10 years. This is the first time we have come across people who have been held for such a considerable length of time.

Has the youngest victim had contact with the outside world?

We believe that she, and the others, had limited freedom. We will continue to speak to the victims to ascertain what this ascertained.

25m ago

Josh Halliday reports that the women were freed on 25 October.

26m ago

Summary

Here is a summary of what we know so far.

• Three women have been freed from 30 years of domestic slavery in a house in Lambeth, south London. Police said although they were aware of cases of people being held for up to 10 years, they had never seen a case of this “magnitude” before.

• One of the women, who is 30, has spent all her life in the house and has never seen the outside world, the Metropolitan police.The other women are a 69-year-old from Malaysia and a 57-year-old from Ireland. The three are “highly traumatised” and are currently together at a place of safety, Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland said.

• Although the women were rescued in October, police only moved to arrest two suspects this morning after “establishing the facts”. The suspects are not British and are in their 60s, police said. Police would not confirm whether they were related.

• The rescue was facilitated by the charity Freedom Charity after one of the women contacted the organisation after seeing its spokeswoman Aneeta Prem on the television. Prem praised her as being “hugely courageous” and called this “a story of great hope”.

36m ago

Asked how they were held, Aneeta Prem of Freedom Charity says they were "basically treated as domestic slaves".

Asked about the courage of the woman who phoned the charity, Prem says that was "hugely courageous".

"It's amazing, actually, that she had the courage to do that," she says.

37m ago

38m ago

Prem says this is a "story of great hope" and the women can help rebuild their lives slowly. "On rare occasions you can say you have helped save lives," she says.

39m ago

Prem says the "safety and rescue of these women were paramount" for the charity and the police.

40m ago

Aneeta Prem of Freedom Charity is being interviewed now on BBC News. He says one of the women saw her on the news and saw the name "Freedom Charity". She called the charity and was believed, Prem says, and the charity then helped rescue them.

41m ago

Here is Hyland's statement in full:

This morning at approximately 7.30pm [sic] we arrested two people in their 60s at an address in Lambeth as part of an investigation into slavery and domestic servitude.

We were contacted in October by Freedom Charity after they had received a call from women stating they were being held against their will at an address in London for more than 30 years.

Through further investigation, we were able to identify the house where they were being held.

With the help of sensitive negotiations conducted by the charity, the three women, a 69-year-old from Malaysia, a 57-year-old from Ireland, and a 30-year-old British woman, were all rescued.

All three women were highly traumatised and were taken to a place of safety, where they remain. They are in the care of a charity who deal with people who are deeply traumatised.

These are deeply traumatised people and it is essentially that we work sensitively to establish the facts in this case.

When we had established the facts, we conducted the arrests this morning.

We have established that all three women were held in this situation for at least 30 years. They did have some controlled freedom.

The human trafficking unit of the Metropolitan police deals with many cases of servitude and forced labour. We have seen some cases where people have been held for up to 10 years, but we have never seen anything of this magnitude before.

47m ago

Hyland says he runs the Met police human trafficking unit. At 7.30am this morning two people were arrested at an address in Lambeth as part of an investigation into domestic servitude.

They were contacted by Freedom Charity in October.

The police identified the house where they were being held.

With the help of sensitive negotiations from the charity, the three women were rescued.

All of them were highly traumatised and taken to a place of safety, where they are in the care of a charity that deals with traumatised people.

When we had established the facts, we conducted the arrests this morning, he says.

All three women were held in this situation for 30 years. They had some "controlled freedom" he says.

The police have seen some cases where people were held for 10 years, but never anything of this magnitude, he says.

Updated 45m ago

50m ago

Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland of the Metropolitan police is about to speak now.

55m ago

Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland, from the Met police's Human Trafficking Unit, said earlier that "a television documentary on forced marriages relating to the work of the Freedom Charity was the catalyst that prompted one of the victims to call for help and led to their rescue".

Órla Ryan reports:

ITV's Exposure: Forced to Marry documentary, which was broadcast on October 9, examined the practice of forced and underage marriage in Britain.

For the programme two reporters posed as the mother and brother of a 14-year-old girl who was due to be married to a 20-year-old man she had met once.

The undercover journalists contacted 56 mosques across Britain and asked clerics to perform an Islamic marriage (anikah). Two-thirds of those contacted refused to perform the marriage, but 18 agreed.

The imams were specifically told that the "bride" did not consent to the marriage, but would agree if it was arranged.

The legal age for marriage in Britain is 16, but under Sharia law girls can marry once they reach puberty.

A number of clerics who agreed to perform the marriage have since been suspended.

According to government figures, around 400 schoolchildren, mainly girls from South Asian communities, are forced into marriage annually in the UK.

57m ago

58m ago

The arrests took place this morning, but the women were rescued a few weeks ago, Sky News's Martin Brunt is reporting.

He says police have said the 30-year-old woman has had no contact with the outside world. The women are very traumatised, and it has been a slow process getting them to answer questions.

1h 1m ago

Recent slavery cases have been dealt with under section 71 of the 2009
Coroners and Injustice Act which outlaws servitude, Owen Bowcottreports. He adds:

The home secretary, Theresa May, has promised further legislation to tackle the problem of trafficking which is likely to be called the modern day slavery bill. The measure is due to be published before the end of the year. May has said it will eradicate an “evil in our midst”.
In 2008, the Home Office estimated that there were approximately 4,000 victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation in the UK at any one time.

1h 2m ago

1h 3m ago

1h 4m ago

More information is coming through from Scotland Yard now.

1h 5m ago

Aneeta Prem of Freedom Charity said earlier that it took a week to rescue the women once they contacted the charity. The police said they were contacted by Freedom Charity in October, suggesting they were rescued a few weeks ago.

1h 7m ago

The house is in the London borough of Lambeth, my colleague Josh Halliday reports.

Alleged slavery house is in Lambeth, south London
— Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday) November 21, 2013

1h 13m ago

The Metropolitan police press conference is expected shortly. This is the statement the police put out earlier:

Police were contacted in October by Freedom Charity after they had received a call from a woman stating she had been held against her will in a house in London for more than 30 years.

Further inquiries by police revealed the location of the house and with the help of sensitive negotiations conducted by the charity the three women, a 69-year-old Malaysian woman, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old British woman were all rescued.

All three women, who were highly traumatised, were taken to a place of safety where they remain.

Updated 1h 12m ago

1h 24m ago

Prem described them as being held in “domestic slavery” but she said she had not heard of any sexual motive. “They haven’t told me anything like that at all.” She said the women had been too frightened to leave.

She said: “The ladies were absolutely terrified of these people they were held by.”

The three presumed victims had access to their own rooms but were "very restricted on everything they could do", Prem said.

Prem said:

I just can’t believe that human beings could treat each other that way. I think it’s something that’s so barbaric and so out of anyone’s imagination that anybody could treat anybody in such a way that people feel that they are slaves, if you like.

Updated 1h 12m ago

1h 26m ago

Asked about what help the women will be given, the charity founder said:

They are going to be afforded all the help and support that can be. I'm so grateful they saw the news. Now they will try to rebuild their lives.

1h 36m ago

Prem said she thought the neighbours knew nothing about what was going on. “One of the things about living in our capital city is people don’t know what’s happening next door to them.”

She said the house was “an ordinary house in an ordinary street that wouldn’t raise any concerns with anybody else”.

Prem said they were now together in “a place of safety and they’re doing very well considering the difficult ordeal they’ve gone through”. There had been “lots of tears and lots of hugging”, she said. There were huge cheers in the Freedom Charity call centre when they were freed, Prem said.

Updated 1h 17m ago

1h 43m ago

Freedom Charity, an organisation that works on issues including forced marriage, said the case emerged after a woman phoned its helpline.

Aneeta Prem of the charity has just been speaking to Sky News.

She said the women had to make calls to the charity in secret and at set times because “they felt like they were in massive danger”.

“With the help of the police we were able to get them out,” she said.

She said she was “thrilled” this had happened.

There was a week between them starting to make the calls and being released, she said.

She said they were worried that they would not in the end want to leave “because obviously 30 years, being held in a very difficult situation, you become very institutionalised to a very bad way of living, so we had to ensure that when they were going to come out they didn’t then decide they were going to go back in”.

They were able to leave the property without police help “but it was done in such a way that it was a very, very excellent thing that happened,” Prem said. She said she could not give more details, but she said people from Freedom Charity were there and the police were on standby.

Updated 1h 17m ago

1h 58m ago

Three "highly traumatised" women have been rescued from a house in south London where they appear to have been held captive for three decades, Scotland Yard has said.

A 69-year-old Malaysian woman, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old British woman were all rescued from the residential address on Thursday morning by detectives from the Metropolitan police Human Trafficking Unit.

Two suspects – a 67-year-old man and a 67-year-old woman – were arrested at the address under the investigation into slavery and domestic servitude, the force said in a statement.

My colleague Josh Halliday has the full story here.

A police press conference is expected shortly and I’ll be covering it live here.

Updated 1h 51m ago