Enslaved

Slavery in Britain did not end with William Wilberforce at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They may be largely invisible to us, but living in our midst are thousands of slaves. Rahila Gupta seeks out five escapees and persuades them to tell us their stories in this compelling book. We meet a pregnant child from Sierra Leone who was locked up in a London house as a domestic slave; a Russian teenager trafficked into prostitution; a Chinese man who lives in fear of the Triads; a religious Somali woman who had to exchange sex for food; and a young Punjabi woman forced into marriage and repeatedly abused by her husband. These are the stories of those who have escaped, through a combination of courage, timing, luck and the humanity of those who helped them. Their testimonies are harrowing but they need to be heard.