Police in Peckford Place, Stockwell, where the women were held captive Photo: JANE MINGAY FOR THE TELEGRAPH By David Barrett, Patrick Sawer and Claire Duffin12:44PM GMT 24 Nov 2013
A letter from the woman who has spent her entire life as a slave in a London maisonette reveals that she felt "like a fly trapped in a spider's web" by her alleged captors.
The 30-year-old became infatuated with neighbour Marius Feneck, 26, and is thought to have secretly sent more than 500 letters to him over a period of seven years, some scented and with kisses on them.
In one letter, published in the Daily Express, the woman repeatedly pleads with Feneck not to confront her alleged enslavers.
It reads: "My darling Angel, my beloved sweetheart, (please do not talk about this or show this to anyone else!!! And do not try to do anything for me!!!)"
She tells Feneck that she wants him to know "the truth" and that she "begged" her alleged captors "not to tear us apart".
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She writes: "They imprisoned me here, locking all the doors and windows."
She goes on to claim that she suffers "unspeakable torment" and repeatedly criticises her alleged captors "who dare to call themselves my 'relatives'."
Mr Feneck’s girlfriend, Rachael Price, 25, said the woman had been writing the letters for seven years, posting them in the couple’s letterbox when she walked past.
“They were scented and she would walk slightly behind the old couple as they passed the letterboxes on the ground floor, so she could slip them in our letter box.
“In them she said she loved him and wanted to be with him for ever. There must have been about 500 letters sent to him over the years, some with lipstick kisses on them, and they were deeply obsessive.”
Details of how two other “slaves” held for more than 30 years had met their captor in a “collective” through a “shared political ideology” have also been disclosed by police.
The two women - a 69-year-old from Malaysia and an Irish 57-year-old - became enslaved after the collective ended, the officer leading the inquiry into their ordeal said.
The third woman who was freed by officers last month was the 30-year-old who had a birth certificate but no other official documentation and had been apparently enslaved all her life.
The disclosures were among a series of developments that included:
• The alleged captors, a man and a woman both aged 67, were said by police to be an Indian and a Tanzanian who came to Britain in the Sixties;
• The five-year-old council maisonette where they lived in south London was identified, raising questions over what the local authority knew was going on in the home;
• Neighbours described how they had thought the alleged captors were “carers” for the three because they saw one of the alleged slaves being pushed in a wheelchair;
• Cult experts said the nature of their captivity showed how political ideologies could act like religious cults;
• Theresa May, the Home Secretary, writing for The Telegraph, warned that slavery was now widespread in modern Britain in places including nail bars.
The new twists in the slavery investigation follow the disclosure on Thursday that the three women had been rescued and their alleged captors arrested.
More than 30 police officers are now dedicated to what Commander Steve Rodhouse said was a “painstaking” investigation which centres on how they met and what happened between them.
“We believe that two of the victims met the male suspect in London through a shared political ideology, and that they lived together at an address that you could effectively call a 'collective’,” he said.
“Somehow that collective came to an end and how the women ended up continuing to live with the suspects.
“How this resulted in the women living in this way for over 30 years is what are seeking to establish, but we believe emotional and physical abuse has been a feature of all the victims’ lives.
“The people involved, the nature of that collective and how it operated is all subject to our investigation and we are slowly and painstakingly piecing together more information. I will not give any further information about it.”
He said the 30-year-old victim, who is believed to have lived with the two suspects and the other two victims all her life, had a birth certificate but added: “That is all the official documentation we can find.” The woman is said to be intelligent and able to read and write, but had received no formal education.
The exact relationships between all five have not been disclosed.
The maisonette in which the five lived, on Peckford Place, on the Angell Town council estate in Stockwell, south London, was still under police guard on Saturday while a door-to-door investigation was also under way.
The building was constructed only five years ago, meaning the three women will have lived at other addresses over the 30-year period being examined by detectives.
It is owned by Lambeth council, which was unavailable for comment on Saturday. However the occupants had gone to some lengths to maintain their privacy, not registering on the electoral roll and keeping their windows covered by net curtains.
One resident, who did not want to be named, said there seemed to have been a peculiar relationship between occupants of the flat.
“I thought the elderly couple were looking after the others, as if they were carers, but there was something strange about it all,” he said.
“The older couple were definitely the ones in charge, they were the dominant ones, you could tell that.
“The young girl was very quiet and would not say very much. She was very pretty. I have to say the older couple were very polite.”
It was also claimed on Saturday night that the 30-year-old woman was “obsessed” with Mr Feneck, 26, who lives two floors above the flat, and sent him hundreds of “love letters”.
“She used to send me pictures and write me letters about how she wanted to be with me,” he told the Mail on Sunday. But he “wasn’t interested”.
Another resident, who would only give her name as Sophie, described how she spotted one of the women being pushed in a wheelchair by another of the occupants of the house three weeks ago.
One man said he had seen a woman in her 30s, who appeared to be of Indian origin, entering the house on two occasions in recent months.
“She looked completely normal. She was wearing a headscarf and just went into the flat on the times I saw her,” said Jose Pereira, 54, a cook.
The rescue was staged after the 57-year-old woman secretly gained access to a telephone and contacted Freedom Charity, which works with victims of enforced labour.
She first contacted them on October 18 and following negotiations over a week the three women left the property on October 25 when the other occupants were out.
They were moved to a safe location where they have been receiving specialist help. Earlier, police said the women had been “brainwashed” because of the fear instilled in them by their captors, and were held by “invisible handcuffs”.
The Malaysian government said it has been denied access to the 69-year-old victim.
Anifah Aman, the Malaysian foreign minister, said his government had made contact with Scotland Yard “because we want to help”, but had its offer was rejected after the woman told detectives she did not want them to reveal any details of her identity to anybody.
“I’m not sure whether she went there for work or as a student, if she’s a citizen there,” she said. “We only know she was originally from Malaysia but we don’t know if she has
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