NHS doctor kept African boy, 13, a slave at Walsall home for more than 20 years
A NHS doctor and his wife smuggled a 13-year-old African boy from his country and used him as a slave at their home in Walsall, a court heard.
Doctor Emmanuel Edet, 61, and his wife Antan, 58, kept Ofonime Sunday Edet, now 40, as a 'house boy' for almost a quarter of a century at various homes in the country, Harrow Crown Court was told.
He was taken from his real Nigerian family without permission – promised work in exchange for money and education, but paid just £2-a-week for 17 hours work a day.
The Edets – who worked as a gynaecologist and senior nursing sister – were found guilty of holding a person in slavery or servitude, child cruelty and assisting unlawful immigration.
The jury heard how, because of work commitments, the Edets constantly moved around the country from Caterham to Scarborough, and then Walsall in 1992.
They initially lived in hospital-provided accommodation in the town before moving to a private property.
Prosecutor Roger Smart said Ofonime, who was 17 at this time, was allowed to sleep in a downstairs bedroom but that during the 24 years he was under the pair's control this was the only address where he had a room.
Mr Smart also said that Ofonime's status in the family was made clear by the fact that his few clothes were placed in a bag and everyone else's items were kept in the room where he slept.
Mr Smart added that while living in Walsall Ofonime had plucked up the courage to ask the Edets if he could go to school. They enrolled him for a short time on a computer course. The Edets moved to Northolt in 1994 from Walsall before settling in a rented house in Perivale, west London, in 2001.
The court was told he used to clean, cook and look after the couple's children. Antan and Emmanuel Edet were arrested in March last year. The Edets will be sentenced at Harrow Crown Court on December 7.
