Enlarge image
Aerial view of Bristol
Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
A couple in Bristol have been sentenced to long prison terms after years of forcing dozens of trafficked people to work in degrading conditions.
The 45-year-old defendant and the one-year-old woman had smuggled at least 29 vulnerable people - some orphans from Slovakia - into Great Britain for almost a decade and promised them a better life, the broadcaster Sky News reported, among others.
The man was sentenced to 16 years and the woman to nine years in prison – both on charges of modern slavery.
According to the BBC, those affected had described the terrible conditions under which they had to live in the process.
For example, a woman who had given birth to a child while working for the couple described that she had seen no way out of the forced labor.
"I knew I couldn't go, there was nothing I could do," the woman was quoted as saying.
According to her own statement, she too had come to the couple in the hope of a better life.
She was lured with the promise that the couple would "take care of everything."
In the end, however, there was hardly any time to sleep.
Couple squandered salaries on cars and gambling
The couple forced their victims to work various jobs and spent the wages themselves on cars or gambling.
In one case, one of the victims is said to have been forced to work in a car wash with a broken arm.
According to the BBC, those convicted would have had to pay their victims at least £923,000 (€1.07m) if they had been paid the minimum wage for eight hours a day.
fek/dpa
