UK police: 3 women were slaves ‘in simple terms’

Forced labor grows more common

LONDON — Three women who were freed from a London home after 30 years had been allowed outside in “carefully controlled circumstances” during their ordeal but were victims of “slavery, in simple terms,” a senior British police officer said Friday.

Commander Steve Rodhouse described a “complicated and disturbing picture of emotional control over many years” in the case of the women, declining to say how they wound up in the south London home.

Two suspects, a man and a woman, were arrested early Thursday on suspicion of forced labor and domestic servitude.

He said investigators are trying to figure out “what were the invisible handcuffs that were used” to exert such control for the 30 years the women were allegedly held captive and subject to physical, mental and emotional abuse.

“It is not as brutally obvious as women being physically restrained in- side an address and not being allowed to leave,” Rodhouse said.

“This may have appeared to be a normal family.”

The disclosure Thursday that a 69-year-old Malaysian, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old Briton were freed after ap- parently spending 30 years in captivity prompted a flurry of speculation and questions about how such a tragedy escaped notice for so long.

The arrests were made after the Irish woman phoned a charity last month to say she was being held against her will along with two others.

The charity engaged in a series of secretive conversations with the women and contacted police.

Two of the women eventually left the house, and police rescued the third.

The case, though ex- treme, is part of a broader phenomenon that officials warn is still happening — and on the rise.

Since the most recent expansions of the European Union and the lifting of restrictions on employment in many countries, instances of situations which amount to forced labor have increased, Eu- ropol says.

Anti- slavery charity The Walk Free Foundation last month released a global index that estimated that more than 29 million people live in some form of modern slavery — which can take the form of domestic servitude, forced marriages, child trafficking and forced labor.