Post date: Nov 23, 2013 5:26:6 PM
British police investigating claims that three women were held in domestic servitude for over 30 years, have begun conducting door-to-door enquiries near a residential property in Lambeth, south London.
LAMBETH, SOUTH WEST LONDON, UK (NOVEMBER 23, 3013) (ITN) - British police investigating claims that three women were held in domestic servitude for over 30 years, on Saturday (November 23) began conducting door-to-door enquiries near a residential property in Lambeth, south London.
The investigation follows the rescue of the three women last month, after they contacted a charity seeking help. A man and woman in their sixties have been arrested in connection with the allegations.Police have not confirmed the property in central to their investigations but the British media widely believes the house in question is where the women were kept for three decades.
The women lived in the house in some kind of "collective" and shared a political ideology with their captors, police said on Saturday.
Aged 69, 57, and 30, they were rescued after calling an anti-slavery charity for help. Police arrested a man and a woman, both 67, of Indian and Tanzanian origin who went to Britain in the 1960s.
The women were freed four weeks ago but police only made the case public on Thursday as the arrests were made, detailing one of the strangest and longest running incidences of domestic servitude to emerge in Britain.
The captives, a 69-year-old Malaysian, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old Briton, may not have been physically restrained but were bound to their captors by "invisible handcuffs" through beatings and brainwashing, the police said.
The suspects, who were also arrested on suspicion of immigration offences, had previously been arrested in the 1970s, the police said but gave no further details