Former NHS obstetrician Emmanuel Edet, 61, and midwife Antan Edet, 58, kept fellow Nigerian Ofonime Sunday Inuk as a ‘houseboy’ after telling immigration officials he was their teenage son when they arrived here in 1989.
Over the next 24 years he worked unpaid up to 17 hours a day looking after the couple’s two sons, cooking, cleaning and gardening.
He was also forced to sleep on a hall floor for long periods of time. He eventually managed to alert a charity to his plight after the couple went to Nigeria for Christmas in 2013 and they were arrested the following March.
Sentencing the couple at Harrow Crown Court today Judge Graham said their treatment of Mr Inuk, now 40, left him ‘conditioned’ to his plight.
Judge Arran said: ‘He was conditioned to the extent that that he did not ask for what he wanted because he expected his request to be refused. He was paid the occasional pocket money of perhaps £10. He claims that that was only at Easter and Christmas and occasionally visitors would give him larger sums.
‘He most certainly was not paid for the work that he was performing for you.
‘The most serious aspect of your behaviour towards him was that it went on for an exceptionally long period of time, robbing him of the opportunity of leading a normal life. He suffered as a result of that treatment and has found it difficult to adjust (to) a normal life.’
The court heard that the sum he was in theory owed for his years of work ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds
Dr and Mrs Edet, from Perivale, north west London, were found guilty by a jury last month of cruelty to a child under 16, servitude and assisting unlawful immigration.
They remained impassive as the sentences were handed down today