This traumatic incident took place almost three years ago.
It’s a dramatic word, one more commonly associated with hostage situations. Emmanuelsblog earlier reported this situation when a disabled man, 40, held as ‘slave and cash-cow’ by wife and lover hired as live-in carer.
Tom was held hostage for four harrowing years
But to all intents and purposes, a ‘hostage’ is what Tom was for four harrowing years.
That’s the length of time that 40-year-old Tom — who has cerebral palsy, is quadriplegic, almost blind and needs 24-hour care — was kept prisoner in his own home by his wife Sarah, 49, and George Webb, 50, the man she had hired to act as his live-in carer.
Between them, the duo — the very people Tom trusted to take care of him — not only began an affair but subjected him to an onslaught of physical and verbal abuse.
Forced to live in squalor, and isolated from his family, he spent 95 per cent of his time in bed in filthy sheets, and was fed the minimum amount he needed to survive.
His captors, meanwhile, were taking his benefit payments to feather their own nests, saving for a flat of their own and spending it on football games and DJ equipment.
‘Most days, I woke up and I wished I hadn’t’
It is almost impossible to imagine how vulnerable Tom must have felt, although today he is able to sum it up with harrowing succinctness.
‘Most days, I woke up and I wished I hadn’t,’ is how he puts it.
Indeed, Tom may not have lived to tell the tale were he not finally able to raise the alarm, leading to a fraught rescue operation — the ‘extraction’ in question — involving both social services and the police.
Sarah and George are found guilty
Sarah and George were subsequently arrested, and last month, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the UK, both were found guilty at Portsmouth Crown Court of holding a person in slavery or servitude.
Jailing them both for 11 years for what he called their ‘gratuitous degradation’ of Tom, Judge William Ashworth told them they had treated him ‘like a cow to be milked’.
Can there be a greater betrayal? It is hard to imagine one. At times, as Tom admits, it felt so overwhelming that it was difficult to bear.
‘When it really sunk in, that this was my life, I wanted to end it all,’ he says. ‘But I couldn’t even do that without help.’
Certainly, by 2016, when Sarah hired the heavy-set, tattooed George Webb to be Tom’s weekday carer, the physical side of the couple’s relationship was all but over.
‘There were several times when I asked if she was unhappy and told her we could amicably go our separate ways,’ he says.
‘But she always said, ”No, it’s all OK”. Beside what they did to me, that’s the worst thing — that she didn’t just walk away.’
At first, says Tom, George was little different to any other carer he had had — but then, one by one, the changes started.
‘He was staying over at weekends and he and Sarah were going out for hours at a time, leaving me on my own. When I asked if a friend could visit, George refused.
‘When I challenged Sarah, she said he ”had us over a barrel”. I had no idea what she meant.’
‘I heard them having sex’
He soon began to realise that his wife had her own reasons for wanting George to stay: the couple had embarked on an affair.
Horrifyingly, Tom heard them having sex, but when he confronted them they just laughed.
In the meantime, Tom was largely left confined to bed, with the curtains closed.
‘For four years I was in the dark, with just a bedside lamp,’ he says.
Food was sporadic; hygiene even more so. At one stage he went five weeks without a shower, and he was frequently left in soiled sheets.
He spent a year without being able to brush his teeth.
‘They gave me just enough food and drink to keep me going, but that was it,’ he says.
Then there was the verbal abuse, with the pair telling him he was useless and that no one wanted him.
‘I can’t remember a lot of the stuff, because I’ve tried to block it out,’ Tom says.
At one point, George hit him with a shoe, for which he was separately convicted of causing actual bodily harm at the couple’s trial.
The court case, which was delayed due to the pandemic, finally began in June this year.
Mother’s passion saved Tom
Tom, supported by his mother and sister, gave evidence over three days, and learned further harrowing details of the contempt in which his wife held him.
Following their arrest, George texted Sarah ‘He’s won’. And she replied: ‘No way, over my dead body, will I let that spastic win’. To hear that she hated me that much was hard,’ he says.
During the four-week trial, lawyers attempted to have the slavery charge dismissed, arguing there was no evidence Tom was treated as a possession.
Their submission was rejected, and a jury found them guilty of wilful neglect and holding a person in slavery.
‘I was on cloud nine,’ Tom recalls. ‘It meant such a lot that I had been listened to.’
