A man has escaped a jail sentence despite being convicted for using “degrading, controlling and bullying” behaviour to force another man to work for him.
Zydrunas Zdanevicius, 30, was found guilty of an offence of forced labour against a fellow Lithuanian man and sentenced to 21 months in prison, but the sentence was suspended for two years.
Southampton crown court was told that Zdanevicius would beat his 25-year-old victim and withhold his wages to force him to continue working for him, delivering leaflets and collecting charity bags.
A Hampshire police spokesman said the judge accepted that Zdanevicius used degrading, controlling and bullying behaviour, including withholding wages, to force the man to work excessive hours.
The defendant was arrested following a police investigation into slavery offences and a number of vulnerable people were taken to a reception area and referred to the UK Human Trafficking Centre.
The police spokesman said that the victim and a 24-year-old Lithuanian man “had travelled from Lithuania in the hope of finding work in the UK”. The spokesman said: “In a ploy known as debt-bonding, it is likely they were told they would get free travel, but that they would have to pay back the money. They ended up working for Zdanevicius seven days a week, delivering and collecting charity bags and living with other people at an address.
“The 25-year-old told the court he was beaten by Zdanevicius at the address and unfairly treated by him because he wasn’t delivering enough leaflets.”
DI Phil Scrase said the complex investigation involved a considerable amount of work and a large number of inquiries dealing with vulnerable and exploited individuals. “These two brave young men felt that their situation was untenable and they left and raised the alarm with the authorities,” he said.
As many as 13,000 people in Britain are victims of slavery, about four times the number previously thought, according to figures produced for the government. The analysis is the first official estimate of the scale of modern slavery in the UK, and includes women forced into prostitution, domestic staff and workers in fields, factories and fishing.
Professor Bernard Silverman, the chief scientific adviser to the Home Office, said the aim was to calculate the number of “hidden” victims who are not reported to the authorities. “Modern slavery is very often deeply hidden and so it is a great challenge to assess its scale,” he said. “The data collected is inevitably incomplete and, in addition, has to be very carefully handled because of its sensitivity.”
The National Crime Agency’s human trafficking centre had previously put the number at 2,744.
Last week Emmanuel Edet, 60, and his wife Antan, 58, each pleaded not guilty to charges of holding a person in slavery and servitude at Harrow Crown Court in London.
Ofonime Sunday Inuk, 39, alleges that the couple kept him as a slave for 24 years.
The couple, a gynaecologist and a nurse, also deny assisting unlawful immigration and cruelty to a person under the age of 16.
That trial continues.
