‘I picked crops on a farm all day for 30p'

A WOMAN has told how she was held captive by criminal gangs for 17 years and forced to pick crops on farms for as little as 30p a day. 

- Robert Kellaway

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.