A MAN allegedly held in servitude by a family of Irish Travellers at a caravan site in England jumped into a canal to escape three pursuers a day after he had been beaten by one of the family, a court has been told.
Six men – Thomas Connors, four of his sons and one of his sons-in-law – along with as daughter, Josie, face charges before Luton Crown Court of holding men in servitude and requiring forced labour of them. The trial could last up to four months.
Twenty-four men were taken from the Greenacres caravan site at Little Billington, Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire last September, following a dawn raid by armed police, complete with helicopter and dogs.
Charges against the Connors have been made about their treatment of eight of these men, though some of the rest will give evidence over the coming weeks in the trial, which could last up to four months. Some of the 24 made no complaints against the Connors.
One of the alleged victims claims he was hired when he was sleeping rough outside Charing Cross rail station in London and offered £50 a day, food and accommodation by “two men and a woman with a baby”.
The man claimed his money and post office savings card were taken from him after he arrived at Greenacres, while he was immediately put to work the next day but given only boiled potatoes to eat.
He claimed he was later punched in the face and left with a nosebleed when one of the accused, Patrick Connors, found him chatting with another worker: “That’s your first warning; you don’t get any more,” Mr Connors allegedly said.
The man decided to escape the next day.
“He got over the fence when he heard children shouting ‘there he is’. He realised they were looking for him and jumped into the canal,” said Frances Oldham QC, prosecuting.
A local fisherman, Peter Hoffman, would support the alleged victim’s claims, she said, since he “remembers seeing a man running towards him bare-chested and being chased by two or three other men”.
His pursuers stopped when they saw the fisherman give him a mobile phone to call the police, she said.
“Eventually, the police arrived and, thanks to Mr Hoffman, [the alleged victim] escaped the clutches of the Connors family.”
None of the alleged victims can be named.
Another of the alleged victims “was held prisoner” for eight weeks from December 2007. He told police he had objected to having his moustache shaved off but was “punched in the face, knocking him off his chair” by another of the accused, Jimmy Connors.
His caravan had gas, but other workers’ did not, while “food was provided, but of the cheapest kind,” Ms Oldham told the jury.
“Any person asking for anything else would be punched and kicked. Once he asked Jimmy for a belt to hold his trousers up. Jimmy replied by kicking him in the legs, and when he asked him not to do this kicked him several more times, causing open wounds.”
She continued that two men “disappeared” during his short stay there.
“There was a rumour someone was buried in the field next to the site. One of them said something like, ‘If you run away you’ll end up like the person who’s buried in the field back there’. It was not a joke,” she continued.
Three long-term workers for the Connors acted as guards over new arrivals, this man claimed. In January 2008, he tried to escape, but Jimmy and Patrick Connors “quickly found him. They were angry and told him not to run again.”
Later, he tried again when he was going door to door looking for tarmac and paving business for the Connors. “[He] went into the garden of an empty house, climbed the fence and attracted the attention of the next-door householder and asked her to call the police.”
One of the victims claimed that an ex-priest, nicknamed “the Minister”, had been recruited at one point by the Connors and that this individual had been “damaged” when he was beaten up by family members.
Concluding the prosecution’s opening, Ms Oldham said: “There may be situations where no physical violence was used or there were no restrictions on movement but where more psychological coercive means were used to effect control,” leaving victims prisoners “of their circumstance”.
