A senior hospital nurse accused with her husband of keeping a man as a slave punched the alleged victim in his right eye when she spotted him with his phone in the kitchen, a court heard today.
Nigerian Ofonime Inuk, 39, claims he was kept a slave by an NHS doctor and his wife for 24 years after being smuggled into Britain.
Emmanuel Edet, 60, a trained obstetrician and gynaecologist, and his wife Antan, 58, a senior sister at a hospital, are accused of stripping Mr Inuk of his....
passport and making him work up to 17 hours a day.
The Nigerian orphan was left to bring up their two sons as they travelled across Britain working for a series of NHS trusts, it was alleged.
Today the court heard he kept a diary in which he recorded his purported treatment.
In it he referred to the Edets as 'sir', 'master' and 'ma', and wrote in one entry: 'Tonight ma hit me so hard in my right eye because she saw me holding my phone in the kitchen'.
Another entry said the fridge door came off its hinges when he was opening it, and he would definitely get the blame for it.
Asked by Roger Smart, prosecuting, why that should be, he said: 'Because they always said I had a destructive hand, that I was always mishandling things.'
He kept a record of how he was allegedly given 'pocket money', of £5 or £10, forced to sleep in the corridor, and to sit in the kitchen all day.
He was not allowed to use the landline in the house, or to charge his phone, though he did so secretly at night.
When a visitor came to stay, he cooked for him, and had to go out of the house in the daytime to make it look like he had a job, the court heard.
Mr Inuk is giving his evidence from behind a screen so he cannot see the defendants.
The court has heard his ordeal began when he was taken under the wing of the Edet family aged 12.
He was the oldest of eight children. His family had fallen into poverty when his father died and he willingly went to work for the Edets in Lagos, Nigeria, being paid £2 or £3 a month.
A short time later the family moved to Israel and then, when he was 14, to Britain.
They brought him into the country by changing his name to their surname and falsely adding him to their passports, it is alleged.
They stayed at addresses, including hospital accommodation, in Chatham, Scarborough, Walsall and London.
He was told that if he left the house and reported matters to the police he would be arrested as an illegal immigrant and sent back to Nigeria.
Roger Smart, prosecuting, detailed yesterday in court how Mr Inuk slept on the kitchen floor on a dirty foam mattress thrown out by a hospital. He was expected to get up first and begin cleaning the house, but was told to sweep instead of using a vacuum cleaner because it was too noisy.
Mr Inuk was also forced to wash clothes by hand because the Edets said it was too expensive to run the washing machine.
He always ate by himself, kept his few possessions in a single bag and was not allowed to sit in the front room or go upstairs, the court heard.
Mr Smart said the couple 'to all intents and purposes owned him, controlling nearly every aspect of his life down to his very name.
'Over a period in excess of 20 years they have deprived him of his identity, his rights to education and freedom of movement and the money he should have received. He has no means of returning to Nigeria. He was entirely dependent on them.'
At one stage he tried to undertake a college course in computer skills but the Edets stopped him, it is claimed. He described how he was frightened of the couple and that he was not 'free'.
Mr Smart said: 'When he did not meet their exacting standards, they hit him and punched him – he recalls this particularly clearly in relation to his trying to apply for college.'
Despite feeling dependent on the Edets, Mr Inuk made several attempts to try to break away from them.
Mr Inuk did seek help but was turned away by police who simply recorded his case as a lost passport, and by social services who said they could not help because he was an adult.
It was revealed in Harrow Crown Court yesterday that he finally escaped their West London home in 2013.
He fled after hearing about another case in the media while the couple travelled to Nigeria for Christmas.
He contacted a charity which tipped off police who were stunned to find him alone in their £450,000 home in Perivale, monitored by a CCTV camera.
Dr Edet and his wife are being prosecuted under modern anti-slavery legislation.
The Edets deny cruelty to a person under 16, slavery and assisting unlawful immigration.
The case continues.
- DailyMail
Share your thoughts....thanks!
No comments:
Post a Comment