Wayne’s story
“I got a job, and that’s where I was befriended by a guy. At the time I thought he was just a friend.”
Tania’s story
They took my passport, said I must pay them £10,000 back, and I had to start working for 30p a day.
Tania* was part of an enslaved crew of around 30 agricultural workers, forced to sleep in shipping containers and beaten if they uttered a word to their fellow victims.
Ordered to work from dawn to dusk, seven days per week, she was fed bread and boiled potatoes with the occasional sandwich or Mars Bar as a special treat.
The workforce was guarded by Russian-speaking thugs who ferried their slaves across the UK in minibuses and administered savage beatings for the smallest transgressions.
Tania arrived from her home in Latvia with a visa for a six month stay.
She had been promised work by an “agency boss” in her home country and arrived at Victoria bus station in London where she was met by a gang member.
She believed hotel accommodation had been arranged and was ushered, with other men and women, into the back of a minibus.
Tania said: “It was summer. We were driving and driving and I thought the hotel must be quite far away. It became dark and I did not know where I was. I spoke no English. We stopped in a village. A man took my passport and papers.
“We went into a house. The rooms were dark, there were a lot of people inside. Sleeping on the floor, everywhere.
“I said, ‘Who are these people?’ He punched me in the face. I was in shock. My nose was bleeding. I didn’t know that I’m not allowed to talk. If you talk you are beaten.
“He said I owed them £10,000 (for arranging her journey to the UK) and work started the next day.”
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With blood pouring from her nose, Tania curled up on the floor in a corner of the room. At 6am she and around 20 others were loaded into mini-buses and driven to a farm. Although she says she will never forget the field she was put to work in, she has no idea where it was.
She said: “We had to fill boxes with peas. To fill one box took one day. They paid 30p for a box.
“I was counting and I was crying. It will take all my life to pay back this £10,000. I was crying, crying.”
Tania had to hide her tears because crying was also forbidden and punishable by beating.
Her crop-picking crew was guarded by two to five “terrible men” armed with sticks.
Discipline was brutal. The crop took three days to pick and they worked from dawn until the light failed, sleeping on the floor of shipping containers on the farm.
She said: “They treated us like we were animals.
“They chose some people and just for fun said, ‘You can drink water from the puddle. If you don’t want to drink they can broken(sic) all your body.”
Tania witnessed horrific violence during her enslavement and on one occasion watched as a man complained of toothache and was attacked by his captors with a hammer.
She said: “They take this hammer and just remove his teeth with the hammer and it’s all bleeding.”
She too had toothache and decided to extract her own to avoid an attack, but told one of the thugs she was worried about infection. He told her: “(The) ocean is big, your body can be food for fish.”
All the slaves were told that they were now illegal migrants and if they tried to escape, they would be arrested on sight by British police and jailed for 15 years. The threat was believed.
After two years of working in fields and greenhouses, Tania reached a breaking point: “One day when I go to bed, these two men hold a boy, maybe 16 years old, and another man he’s just beating him by the legs.
“I saw so much of this every day. I can’t see this madness anymore. I just said to them: ‘You are disgusting, you disgusting people. You are three adult men, you’re beating a little boy.’ He was skinny, he looked like a skeleton. They left the boy and just grabbed me.”
They dragged Tania outside and bundled her into the boot of a car. She said: “I knew they were going to kill me, but never mind. It was too much.”
Instead she was driven to a field where she was dragged out of the boot and the thugs, “…explained my situation. That I am nobody. Because I had broken the visa rule I must go to prison for 15 years. I started to be scared and they were gone. They left me on the field. It was dark, cold.
“I thought, ‘My God. Nobody wants me. I am not human. I said to myself, ‘I am nobody, I am nobody.’”
Tania had in fact been delivered almost into the arms of a different gang who she stumbled across after walking out of the field. Again Russian-speaking, her new captors asked her if she wanted to work and invited her to get on a bus.
The new boss was more lenient, she received £35 a week. Her accommodation was crowded but warm. The food was better. She and her fellow captives were allowed to speak and given a day and a half off every week.
Her work wasn’t in fields, she was sent to work as a dish-washer in a busy pub giving all her wages to her gang boss.
She was allowed to go into shops and began to pick up some English. She was forced to work for a further 15 years until in 2017 she plucked up the courage to escape.
On one of her afternoons off, she walked into a Citizens Advice Bureau and handed over a note which read: ”Please help me, I am not legal.”
The contact led to the Salvation Army who in turn referred her to our Women’s Safehouse.
Tania said: “I was moved to Unseen’s Safehouse where my case worker made me a cup of tea. I was given a room, but I could not sleep for many weeks.
“The team supported me to complete English courses, see my doctor.
“I remember a trip to a museum, I didn’t think I could go because I was illegal. My case worker knows how much I love history and told me I must go, it will be good for you and she was right. Volunteering in the museum was one of the happiest days of my life.”
Tania has volunteered at a various historical sites and with the Salvation Army. She continues to receive therapeutic support which aid her recovery from her experience.
Tania*’s name has been changed to protect her identity
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