NIGERIAN doctor Emmanuel Edet and his wife Antan have been found guilty of enslavement by the Harrow Crown Court in northwest London after they were convicted of keeping Ofonime Sunday Inuk as a slave for 24 years.
In March 2014, Akwa Ibom-born Dr Edet and his wife were arrested and charged with enslaving fellow Nigerian Ofonime Sunday Inuk for 24 years between 1989 and 2013. Yesterday, Harrow Crown Court convicted them of the offence and they now face lengthy sentences in jail.
Damaris Lakin of the Crown Prosecution Service, said on that Dr Edet, 61, and Antan Edet, 58, held their victim captive from the time he was brought to Britain when he was 14 years old. Prosecutors said the couple were convicted on charges of child cruelty, slavery and assisting in illegal immigration.
Apparently, they forced Mr Inuk to work for no pay and threatened him with deportation if he tried to escape. According to Mr Lakin, Dr Edet had told the teenager when they brought him from Nigeria in 1989 that they would pay him and provide him with an education.
However, instead, the victim, now 40, was forced to cook, clean, garden and care for the couple’s children without any pay for up to 17 hours a day. Dr Edet, who worked for Surrey County Council has written several academic works on child welfare and is an expert on teenage pregnancies and is the author of guidelines followed by hundreds of health workers.
His wife is a senior ward manager at Ealing Hospital, less than four miles from their modern terraced home in Perivale, North West London. After being rebuffed several times after escaping, Ofonime was eventually granted audience in 2-013 when he walked into a police station.
Mr Larkin added: “He got no education and had only very limited contact with his family and the outside world. The couple took his passport, he had no identity documents and is forced to eat alone and typically slept on hallway floors."
Prosecutors said that the Edet's told their captive he would be arrested as an illegal immigrant and deported if he left the house and contacted police. They had changed his name and added him to their family passport as their son when they brought him into Britain.
