Slavery and abduction cases worldwide

The women found in south London are the latest in a series of apparently similar cases that have gained world attention.

November 22, 2013 12:57 pm | Updated November 17, 2021 05:48 am IST

The >women found in south London are the latest in a series of apparently similar cases that have gained world attention.

— Rebecca Balira, an HIV scientist, was jailed in August 2011 for keeping Methodia Mathias, 21, as a slave for six months in a house in Thamesmead, southeast London, in the first prosecution of its kind in the U.K. after new laws were brought in a year earlier.

— Husband and wife James and Josie Connors were convicted in July 2012 of having “brutally manipulated and exploited” destitute men by forcing them into servitude. They were jailed for 11 years and four years for exploiting and abusing the men for financial gain at a caravan site in Bedfordshire.

— Elisabeth Fritzl disappeared from Amstetten, Austria, in 1984 aged 18. She re-emerged from the basement where her father, >Josef, had kept her captive for 24 years in 2008 . She bore seven children, one of whom died.

— Ariel Castro, a former school bus driver, abducted Michelle Knight, 32, Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23, from the streets of Cleveland, Ohio between 2002 and 2004. They were rescued after Berry, along with a six-year old daughter born in captivity, managed to escape in May 2013. Castro was >sentenced to life imprisonment but was >found hanged in prison .

— Natascha Kampusch was abducted at the age of 10 in March 1998 in Vienna, Austria, and held for more than eight years in a secret cellar in Strasshof. She escaped in 2006. Her kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, killed himself the same day by stepping in front of a moving train.

— © Guardian News & Media 2013

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