Maros Tancos, and Joanna Gomulska forced vulnerable people to work unpaid at car wash

A couple have been jailed for a total of 25 years after trafficking at least 29 vulnerable people to the UK and forcing them to work for free at a car wash and live in a property described as the “gate to hell”.

Maros Tancos, and Joanna Gomulska, both 46, kept the victims as “prisoners” in squalor in the house in Bristol and subjected them to beatings and death threats, a court heard.

Victims were forced to work unpaid at Tancos’s car wash business and then do paid jobs at night including catching chickens, packing milk and sorting parcels, with the couple spending their wages on second hand cars and gambling.

One was forced to work at the car wash with a broken arm, while another fled after falling pregnant and gave birth to a baby who was malnourished.

Some of the people trafficked had been raised in orphanages in Slovakia and were promised a better life by the couple.

Read more