Free download guilty crown art6/25/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Mr Cavin said that the couple had completely denied Mr Somerset-How of his autonomy and if he had been allowed to leave his bedroom, he may have dismissed Webb as his carer and divorced his wife. ‘Tom was held as if he was a cattle or animal’ They then staged a rescue with police and social services, in “an operation that had the marks of extracting someone as a hostage”, the court heard. The jury was told that Mr Somerset-How eventually managed to raise the alarm about how he was being treated with a friend who alerted his parents. When he was finally rescued, he had not brushed his teeth in over a year. Mr Somerset-How was kept in bed for 90 per cent of the time, only allowed to shower once a week, and was routinely given just a packet of crisps and a sandwich to eat. “Keeping him alive kept a roof over their heads,” Paul Cavin KC told the jurors. Instead, prosecutors argued that by cutting him off from his family, keeping him inside, and taking his money away from him, he was in effect being treated like a slave. But neither of those circumstances applied to Mr Somerset-How. ![]() Usually, modern slavery charges are only brought in cases where the victim has been trafficked from abroad or forced to work for no pay. Tom Somerset-How, 40, was kept in squalid conditions as his partner Sarah Somerset-How and carer George Webb had an affair in the room next door while living off his money and “using him as a cash cow”.Īfter a four-week trial at Portsmouth Crown Court, Hants, jurors deliberated for a little more than 12 hours before finding Webb, 50, and Mrs Somerset-How, 49, guilty of holding a person in slavery or servitude. ![]() A bed-bound husband with cerebral palsy was forced to become a slave for his adulterous wife and carer, a jury has concluded in a landmark court case. ![]()
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