FOUR MEMBERS of an Irish Traveller family in England have been convicted after a 13-week trial on multiple charges of keeping homeless men in servitude, making them do forced labour and other abuses.
But following seven days of deliberation, the jury at Luton Crown Court could not agree verdicts on more than 30 other charges against these four and three other members of the Connors family.
Family members were also cleared on some charges.
Tommy Connors snr (52), who had faced 11 charges, was found guilty of one count of servitude, one of forced labour and one of causing actual bodily harm.
His son Patrick, daughter Josie, and her husband James John Connors were convicted of holding a person in servitude and other offences.
The Crown Prosecution Service is to announce today whether it will seek to again prosecute the charges on which the jury could not agree.
One of the homeless men – none of whom can be named – was recruited by James John Connors at a petrol station when he was depressed and contemplating suicide.
In court, the man acknowledged that he could have left the Connors’ caravan site near Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire but said he was scared of James John Connors.
“Seven years of abuse, starvation and torture. There was no respect.They treated me like a slave, and that’s putting it mildly,” he said during the trial.
Another witness told the court that one worker was beaten after he had broken a Waterford Crystal vase worth £3,000 while he cleaned James John’s caravan, as other workers were also required to do.
In his evidence, James John Connors said the workers’ living conditions were down to themselves, adding they had lived “in cardboard boxes when . . . on the streets”.
Another victim, whom the jury found had been held in servitude by Tommy Connors snr and his son, Patrick, told the court: “You couldn’t fight them all. They would say, ‘I’ll find you, no matter where you are, we’ll get you’.”
The victims were barred from using toilets and showers at the caravan park. Instead, they were taken irregularly to a local leisure centre for a shower.
The police inquiry was launched in March 2011 following legislation a year earlier that made servitude a crime under British law. Previously, police had to try and get prosecutions for false imprisonment.
Conspiracy to hold someone in servitude can bring a jail sentence of up to 14 years.
