Slavery and abduction cases in the UK and worldwide

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/21/slavery-abduction-cases-uk-worldwide-south-london-women

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• Rebecca Balira, an HIV scientist, was jailed in August 2011 for keeping Methodia Mathias, 21, as a slave for six months in a house in Thamesmead, south-east London, in the first prosecution of its kind in the UK after new laws were brought in a year earlier.

• Husband and wife James and Josie Connors were convicted in July 2012 of having "brutally manipulated and exploited" destitute men by forcing them into servitude. They were jailed for 11 years and four years respectively for controlling, exploiting and abusing the men for financial gain at a caravan site near Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire.

<strong>Around the world</strong>

• Elisabeth Fritzl disappeared from the town of Amstetten, Austria, in 1984 aged 18. She re-emerged from the dungeon-like basement chamber where her father, Josef, had kept her captive for 24 years in 2008. She bore him seven children, one of whom died.

• Ariel Castro, a former school bus driver, abducted Michelle Knight, 32, Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23, from the streets of Cleveland, Ohio between 2002 and 2004. They were rescued from imprisonment after Berry, along with a six-year old daughter born in captivity, managed to escape in May 2013. Castro was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole plus 1,000 years but was found hanged in his prison cell.

• Natascha Kampusch was abducted at the age of 10 in March 1998 on her way to school in Vienna, Austria, and held for more than eight years in a secret cellar in the town of Strasshof. She escaped in August 2006. Her kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, killed himself the same day by stepping in front of a moving train.

• The Belgian six: Between mid-1995 and August 1996, six Belgian children were abducted and abused, on separate occasions, by Marc Dutroux. Only Sabine Dardenne and Laetitia Delhez escaped alive. Dutroux was eventually blamed for the deaths of five people including four females aged eight to 19 and is serving a life sentence.

• Jaycee Dugard, 11, was abducted from a school bus stop in June 1991 in South Lake Tahoe, California. She remained missing for more than 18 years before being discovered living in a tent at the home of Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy in August 2009. By then Dugard had two daughters aged 11 and 15. Garrido was sentenced to 431 years imprisonment.

• Elizabeth Smart, 14, was abducted from her bedroom in a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah, in June 2002. She was found nine months later, having been taken by a man who had been working at her home. Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Ileen Barzee were indicted for her kidnapping and Mitchell was sentenced to life in prison.

• Shawn Hornbeck, 11, disappeared in 2002 while riding his bike in Missouri. He was found more than four years later with Ben Ownby, 13, who had been abducted more recently, in the apartment of Michael J Devlin in Kirkwood, St Louis.

• Steven Stayner, seven, was kidnapped in 1972 while walking home from school in Merced, California. He escaped in 1980 and Kenneth Eugene Parnell was convicted of kidnapping him and a second boy, five-year-old Timmy White, and sentenced to seven years in prison.

• Fusako Sano, a nine-year-old Japanese girl was grabbed at knifepoint on her way to school in 1990 and held captive by Nobuyuki Sato in his parents' home. She was rescued nine years later.

• Lens Simakhina and Katya Martynova, two Russian teenagers, were kidnapped in October 2000 and held captive by Viktor Mokhov in a dungeon near Moscow. They were beaten and raped for three and a half years, resulting in three pregnancies, but were freed by police in May 2004.

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