Imagine you were kept captive by a millionaire for 26 years, forced to live in a dirty caravan, and not properly paid for the work you do…would you be happy with a payout of less than half a million dollars?
No, we wouldn’t be happy with it, either. But that’s exactly what happened to “Victim A,” a man who was forced to live in filth by a millionaire traveler family in the United Kingdom.
The vulnerable man, who has not been officially named by the British courts, was not only forced to live as a slave but was beaten regularly and made to eat scraps of leftover food. The horrifying story came to light in the late 2010s when a gang of 11 people was jailed in 2017 for exploiting a number of people – not just Victim A. The gang, which was mostly made up of members of the Rooney family, traveled the United Kingdom in mobile homes and amassed a multi-million-pound fortune by cleaning driveways…and failing to report their income to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the British equivalent of the IRS. By 2019, the gang had been forced to pay back just a fraction of the proceeds – a mere £1million of their £4million fortune. That money was meant to go to their victims, but they were not forthcoming in dishing the funds back out.
The gang was also found to have targeted homeless people and individuals with learning disabilities, forcing them to work for their businesses and not properly compensating them for the help.
Victim A, now in his fifties, has waited so long for his former captors to pay him the money that he has been owed that they have since been released from prison and are moving on with their lives. The court offered Victim A a mere £12,428 under the Proceeds of Crime Act, but it was wholly inadequate and his family eventually chose to file a lawsuit against the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority that granted them the money.
And after seven years, Victim A finally received some compensation – albeit, funded by the British taxpayer. A total of £352,000 has been given to the victim, and family members say the money will now be used to pay for his round-the-clock care.
And the other victims? Well, they were even more unlucky. A total of fifteen other victims held captive by the evil traveling gang have sadly passed away before they could claim compensation even remotely close to what Victim A received – and one man even died without members of his family knowing.
The world can be a cruel, cruel place.