‘I picked crops on a farm all day for 30p’ Woman held captive by gangs for 17 years
Tania, now 53, was part of an enslaved crew of around 30 agricultural workers, made to sleep in shipping containers and beaten if they uttered a word to fellow victims.
Ordered to work from dawn to dusk, seven days per week, she was fed bread and boiled potatoes with the occasional sandwich or Mars bar as a treat.
The workforce was guarded by Russian-speaking thugs who ferried slaves across the UK in minibuses and administered savage beatings for the smallest transgressions.
Tania’s deeply shocking story began in the summer of 2000 when, aged 32, she arrived in the UK from her home in Latvia with a six-month visa.
She had been promised work by an “agency boss” and arrived at Victoria bus station in London where she was met by a gang member. She believed hotel accommodation had been arranged and was ushered, with other men and women, into the back of a minibus. Tania said: “It was summer. We were driving and driving and I thought the hotel must be quite far away.
“It became dark and I did not know where I was. I spoke no English. We stopped in a village. A man took my passport and papers. We went into a house. The rooms were dark, there were a lot of people inside. Sleeping on the floor, everywhere. I said, ‘Who are these people?’ He punched me in the face. I was in shock. My nose was bleeding. I didn’t know that I’m not allowed to talk. If you talk you are beaten. He said I owed them £10,000 (for arranging her journey to the UK) and work started the next day.”
With blood pouring from her nose, Tania curled up on the floor in a corner of the room. At 6am she and around 20 others were driven to a farm. Although she says she will never forget the field she was put to work in, she has no idea where it was.
She said: “We had to fill boxes with peas. To fill one box took one day. They paid 30p for a box.
“I was counting and I was crying. It will take all my life to pay back this £10,000.”
Tania had to mind her tears because crying was also forbidden and punishable by beating. Her crop-picking crew was guarded by two to five “terrible men” armed with sticks.
The peas took three days to pick and they worked from dawn until light failed, sleeping on the floor of shipping containers on the farm. She said: “They treated us like animals.They chose some people and just for fun said, ‘You can drink water from the puddle.’ If you don’t want to they can broken(sic) all your body.”
Tania witnessed horrific violence and on one occasion watched as a man complained of toothache and was attacked by his captors with a hammer. She said: “They take this hammer and just remove his teeth.” She too had toothache and decided to extract her own.
All the slaves were told that they were now illegal migrants and if they tried to escape, they would be arrested on sight by UK police and jailed for 15 years.The threat was believed.
After two years of working in fields and greenhouses,Tania, who is now being supported by anti-slavery charity Unseen UK, reached a breaking point.
She said: “One day when I went to bed, these two men hold a boy, maybe 16 years old, and another man he’s just beating him by the legs.
“I saw so much of this every day. I can’t see this madness anymore. I just said to them: ‘You are disgusting, disgusting people. You are three adult men, you’re beating a little boy’.They left the boy and just grabbed me.”
They dragged Tania outside and bundled her into the boot of a car. She said: “I knew they were going to kill me, but never mind. It was too much.”
Instead, she was driven to a field where she was dragged out of the boot and left by the thugs, who she says told her: “Because I had broken the visa rule I must go to prison for 15 years.
“I started to be scared and they were gone. I thought, ‘My God. Nobody wants me. I am not human. I said to myself, ‘I am nobody, I am nobody’.”
The memory of the night 20 years ago when she was certain she was about to be murdered overwhelms her and she breaks down.
Tania had in fact been delivered pretty much into the arms of a second gang of slave-masters who she stumbled across after walking out of the field. Again Russian-speaking, her new captors asked her if she wanted to work and invited her to get on a bus. The new boss was more lenient, she received £35 a week, and was sent to work as a dishwasher in a busy pub, giving all her wages to her gang boss.
“I started to be scared and they were gone. I thought, ‘My God. Nobody wants me. I am not human. I said to myself, ‘I am nobody, I am nobody’.”
The memory of the night 20 years ago when she was certain she was about to be murdered overwhelms her and she breaks down.
Tania had in fact been delivered pretty much into the arms of a second gang of slave-masters who she stumbled across after walking out of the field. Again Russian-speaking, her new captors asked her if she wanted to work and invited her to get on a bus. The new boss was more lenient, she received £35 a week, and was sent to work as a dishwasher in a busy pub, giving all her wages to her gang boss.
She was forced to work for a further 15 years until in 2017 she plucked up the courage to escape.
On one of her afternoons off, she walked into a Citizens Advice Bureau and handed over a note which read: “Please help me, I am not legal.”
The contact led to the Salvation Army, who in turn referred her to Unseen, which operates safe houses for escaped victims of modern slavery.
The charity continues to support Tania with an immigration application and she is awaiting a decision from the Home Office on whether she will be allowed to remain in the UK.
If you are concerned about something you’ve seen or if you need help or advice, call the UK Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline on 08000 121 700. It’s free, staffed by trained advisors, confidential, open 24 hours a day and available in more than 200 languages.