A couple who kept a man in servitude for almost a quarter of a century after illegally bringing him to Britain have been jailed for six years each.



Emmanuel Edet, 61, a former NHS obstetrician, and Antan Edet, 58, a midwife, kept Ofonime Sunday Inuk as a “houseboy” after telling immigration officials he was their teenage son when they arrived from Nigeria in 1989.

Over the next 24 years Inuk worked unpaid up to 17 hours a day looking after the couple’s two sons, cooking, cleaning and gardening. For long periods of time he had to sleep on a hall floor.

He eventually managed to alert a charity to his plight after the couple went to Nigeria for Christmas in 2013, and they were arrested the following March.

Sentencing them at Harrow crown court on Monday, the judge Graham Arran said their treatment of Inuk, now 40, had left him “conditioned” to his plight.

The judge said: “He was conditioned to the extent that he did not ask for what he wanted because he expected his request to be refused. He was paid the occasional pocket money of perhaps £10. He claims that that was only at Easter and Christmas, and occasionally visitors would give him larger sums. He most certainly was not paid for the work that he was performing for you.

“The most serious aspect of your behaviour towards him was that it went on for an exceptionally long period of time, robbing him of the opportunity of leading a normal life. He suffered as a result of that treatment and has found it difficult to adjust [to] a normal life.”

The court heard that the sum he was in theory owed for his years of work ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The couple, of Perivale, north-west London, were found guilty by a jury last month of cruelty to a child under 16, servitude and assisting unlawful immigration. They remained impassive as they were sentenced on Monday.

Caroline Carberry, prosecuting, said Inuk felt that his life had been ruined by his years in the family home. Analysing his victim impact statement, she said: “He has suffered very low self-esteem in regards to interaction with others. He spoke of feeling sad, alone and depressed. He can see no future and thought his life had been wasted and, as such, considered suicide.”

The couple were each jailed for three years for child cruelty, six for servitude and one for the immigration offence, all to run concurrently.

Although their mistreatment of Inuk spanned 24 years, servitude only became an offence under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, so they were convicted and sentenced for their actions only between 2010 and 2013. However, the judge said he considered the total length of time Inuk suffered as an aggravating feature.

Inuk told the trial that his passport was confiscated and he was told that if he left the house he would be deported as an illegal immigrant.

The gently spoken victim, who gave his evidence from behind a screen so he could not see his tormentors, said the Edets changed his name and added him to their family passport as their son when they brought him, aged about 13 or 14, to the UK in 1989 via Israel.

He had agreed to go with them because he believed he would be paid and educated. He lived with the couple at several locations including London and Walsall, and kept a diary in which he catalogued his treatment at the hands of people he called “Sir” and “Ma”.

He made several attempts to flee. He told the jury that he spoke to a family friend, an MP, and was left feeling “a bit dejected” when he tried to report the Edets to the police in around 2005 only to be told they could not help as it was a “family matter”.