London slaves' captors linked to 13 addresses

Apartment in Brixton, south London is only one piece in a complex jigsaw that police are trying to piece together

Metropolitan police officers at the home in Peckworth Place, Lambeth, south London where three women were held as slaves. Photograph: Johnny Armstead/Demotix/Corbis

Police have identified 13 addresses in London linked to the couple suspected of holding three women as prisoners for at least 30 years in a cult-type arrangement dominated by physical and mental abuse.

The number of properties associated with the couple, who are both aged 67, suggests the victims were moved around several times over the past three decades.

The police continued to carry out house-to-house inquiries on Sunday at the latest address where the "family" lived – a ground-floor flat in Peckford Place, Angell Town, Brixton, south London, owned by Lambeth council.

That flat is only one piece in a complex jigsaw that the police are trying to piece together over a 30-year period. Many of these locations may have been home to the women – two of whom joined the male suspect 30 years ago because they followed the same ideology.

The police have likened the social setup in which they lived to a collective, and other sources have described the extreme emotional control which held the women within the household as "cult-like".

The two suspects arrested over the discovery are believed to have also been arrested several times in the 1970s, linked to their roles in a far-left political movement based in Brixton.

The Metropolitan police said on Sunday that it had not received any contact from neighbours or members of the public raising concerns about the suspects, and the women living with them. But the police have admitted they had originally arrested the suspects, who are of Indian and Tanzanian descent, in the 1970s.

The three women allegedly kept as slaves are a 69-year-old Malaysian, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old Briton. Police confirmed the youngest woman – whom sources suggest is the Irish woman's daughter – has a birth certificate.

There is also a suggestion that the police and social services were contacted by a member of the public 15 years ago to alert them to the fact the youngest woman was not attending school.

Lambeth social services have had contact with the family, it is understood. But there is a suggestion that the authorities might have been prevented from taking any action because the victims vetoed it.

An impassioned letter to a neighbour, written by the youngest woman in the apartment where the family lived, revealed her desperate situation. The woman, who is aged 30 and is understood to have been born within the collective, told her neighbour in one letter that she felt "like a fly trapped in a spider's web".

The woman was said to have become infatuated with the neighbour, Marius Feneck, 26. Feneck's partner claimed the woman sent him more than 500 letters over seven years, some scented and with kisses on them. According to reports, she wrote in one letter: "They imprisoned me here, locking all the doors and windows." The letter also claims that she suffers "unspeakable torment" and repeatedly criticises her alleged captors "who dare to call themselves my 'relatives'".

More than 30 police officers are now dedicated to what Commander Steve Rodhouse has said is 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 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."

The suspects are on police bail. They are suspected of keeping the women in a state of domestic servitude, of false imprisonment and carrying out physical violence towards them. Police said that emotional and physical abuse appeared to have been a feature of all the victims' lives.

The three women were helped to escape from the apartment by charity workers and police on 25 October.They had allegedly been held against their will since the eldest two first joined what police called "a collective", organised around a shared political ideology, more than 30 years ago.

London slaves: three women freed after 30 years' captivity

Traumatised trio rescued from 'ordinary house on ordinary street' as police say human trafficking case is worst ever found in UK

DI Kevin Hyland speaks to the press. Police arrested two people alleged to have held three women as slaves for decades. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Three women have walked to freedom from a south London house where they were held for 30 years in what police described as the worst case of modern-day slavery ever uncovered in Britain.

Police said on Thursday the youngest woman, a 30-year-old British citizen, had had "no contact with the outside world" and was probably born in captivity, possibly within the house in Lambeth.

All three women – a 69-year-old from Malaysia, a 57-year-old fromIreland and the British woman – were described as "deeply traumatised", and were being looked after by specialists.

The extraordinary story of how the women were rescued from three decades of fear and enslavement within an "ordinary house in an ordinary street" in south London emerged on Thursday after the Metropolitan police's human trafficking unit arrested an unnamed man and woman, both 67, at the same property in Lambeth, at 7.30am.

The pair, who are not British citizens, were bailed early on Friday morning until a date in January. They were arrested on suspicion of being involved in forced labour and domestic servitude, contrary to Section 71 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

The arrest was the final act in a highly sensitive, secretive investigation aimed first at rescuing the women and then getting evidence to detain the suspects.

It began when the Irish woman made an audacious telephone call for help last month. She acted after seeing a television documentary and watching the founder of an organisation called the Freedom Charity being interviewed.

Aneeta Prem, the founder of the organisation, said it was a news interview she carried out after a documentary that led to the call for help. "The Irish lady saw me on TV and the name of the charity was a catalyst. That is exactly what they wanted, they wanted freedom," she said.

The charity contacted the police. Tense negotiations took place over a week during secret telephone calls that the women were able to make from the house, before – in a carefully choreographed rescue – the three women were able to walk out of the property on 25 October, where officers were waiting.

They were taken into specialist care, and over days and weeks they were coaxed into talking about what had happened to them. Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland, who leads the Met's human trafficking unit, said what had been uncovered in the home was like nothing the police had ever experienced before.

"In London we have investigated cases where people have been held in servitude or forced labour for up to 10 years, but 30 years is quite extraordinary and not something we have seen before," he said.

He added the youngest victim had probably spent her whole life "under the control or in the company of these people".

Hyland said the three women were highly traumatised and were being kept in a place of safety. He said it had taken time following their rescue for them to be able to talk to the police.

"There's a lot of difficulties with the victims," he said. "These are deeply traumatised people and we are getting professional help to establish the events that have happened to them.

"It's been a very difficult process to establish the facts, one that we haven't experienced before.

"When we had established the facts we conducted the arrests.

"We've established that all three women were held in this situation for at least 30 years.

"They had limited freedom, there was some controlled freedom but their lives were allegedly one of domestic servants or forced labour. They were living in a normal community, but that's not unusual for cases of servitude, trafficking or forced labour."

More details of the rescue emerged later on Thursday. The Met police said the initial call to the charity was made by the Irish captive on 18 October, after the women had watched a documentary about forced marriage.

The woman told the helpline she had been held against her will in a house in London for more than 30 years. She also said there were two others with her.

The charity passed the information on to the police and detectives began to investigate to establish the exact location where the women were being held.

At the same time, workers from the Freedom Charity maintained contact with the women in a series of secret phone calls.

The call to the charity came through some time after the TV documentary was broadcast.

Prem said her workers treated "every call as a last chance" and immediately sought to help the women. "We gained their trust over a period of telephone calls when they could telephone. That had to be done in secret," she said.

"They were very brave to carry on with that. It was very difficult for them to get to the telephone. They gave us set times when they were able to speak to us."

The rescue was planned for 25 October when arrangements were made to meet them at an agreed location.

Two of the women – the 30-year-old and 57-year-old – walked out of the house and met the charity workers and the police as planned. They then identified the location where they had been held and the police moved in to rescue the eldest woman from the property on the same day.

Describing the conditions the women have been living in, Prem said: "They felt they were in massive danger." Their alleged captors were the "heads of the family" and the women were "absolutely terrified" of them.

"They were living lives of domestic servitude," she said. "They did have rooms that they could use but they were really restricted about what they could do and could never leave the front door."

Prem told BBC Newsnight: "They are very distressed about what's happened but they're making steady process. I've spent a great deal of time with them and think they're making as much progress as we can expect them to. It's been very difficult for them."

Describing the moment they walked out of the house, Prem said: "They threw their arms around me and thanked me for work we have done … it was a very, very emotional time."

The case has echoes of abductions of three woman by Ariel Castro in Ohio in the US in 2002 and 2004, and of the Elisabeth Fritzl and Natascha Kampusch incarcerations in Austria.

On 25 October the rescue operation came to fruition, and the women were able to walk to freedom without their captors realising. "It was planned that they would be able to walk out of the property. The police were on standby," said Prem. "I don't believe the neighbours knew anything about it at all. It was just an ordinary house in an ordinary street."

In the offices of the charity, the workers were elated when the call confirming they were safe came through. "When we found out that they came out of that house, there were huge cheers here that they were safe," said Prem.

Despite her work on so-called "honour" crimes and forced marriages, she – like the police – had never seen enslavement of this magnitude.

"We have had no experience of anything like this before. We have spoken to other people around this and it's out of our comfort zones," she said.