Traveller gang enslaved 18 homeless men, telling one: ‘Dig your own grave’

A TRAVELLER family enslaved 18 homeless and disabled people for almost three decades, telling them to dig their own graves, it has been revealed.

The 11 relatives have been convicted of running a modern slavery ring, which kept one of its captives in “truly shocking” conditions for decades.

Vulnerable people were forced to work for the Rooney clan for little or no wages. Meanwhile, the gang members, convicted of fraud and slavery charges, enjoyed holidays in Barbados, drove high-performance cars and used the money on cosmetic surgery and even shelled out on a Manchester United soccer school, earned off the backs of their workers.

Operating from sites in Lincolnshire, they targeted victims who were homeless, had learning disabilities or complex drug and alcohol issues. The male victims, aged 18 to 63, were freed after raids by Lincolnshire Police and the National Crime Agency, in 2014.

One of the victims, who had worked for the family for 26 years, said he was ordered to dig his own grave and told “that’s where you’re going” if he did not sign a bogus work contract.

The man’s sister told how he was beaten with a rake when he overslept, had his teeth smashed with a concrete slab and had been left “psychologically damaged” by his dreadful ordeal.

Chief Supt Nikki Mayo, who led the investigation, said: “These men were being kept in very poor conditions and made to work for little money. The victims were ‘accommodated’ in caravans without running water or toilet facilities, and in some cases the electricity to them was dangerously obtained from a nearby pylon.”

Some of the gang also targeted four elderly home owners, getting them to sign over properties into their names and selling three on for profit – one for £250,000. One the householders died without his family knowing. It was only when they contacted police, they discovered they had missed his funeral.

After four trials resulting in convictions, the full scale of the offending can now finally be revealed after a ruling at Nottingham Crown Court yesterday. The 11 will be sentenced next month.