An Irish traveller and three of his sons were today (Tuesday) accused of making large amounts of money by holding vulnerable men in captivity and making them work for nothing.
Over 15 years Tommy Connors Senior and his family were said to have recruited men from homeless centres, soup kitchens and off the street with the offer of paid work, food and accommodation.
A jury of six women and six men at Luton Crown Court were told the men were made to carry out daily physical labour for the family’s block paving business and were threatened with violence if they asked for wages or tried to leave their ‘Spartan’ accommodation at the Green Acres Travellers’ Site, Little Billington, near Leighton Buzzard.
Prosecutor Ben Gumpert said: “Typically recruitment would take place at centres for the homeless, soup kitchens or simply on the street. After, these individuals have been held against their will and have been forced to work for the Connors’ family without payment.
“They worked very long hours during the week, leaving weekends for door to door canvassing. When not engaged on work for which the Connors family made money, workers were put to work at the Green Acres site, weeding, cleaning and generally tidying.
“Physical violence and the threat of such violence, whether spoken or unspoken, was used to ensure compliance with demands for work, to put down any attempt to claim the promised wages and to instil a fear of retribution if any worker attempted to escape the clutches of the Connors family.
“The evidence suggests that very substantial amounts of money have been made by the Connors family through their exploitation of the labour of their workers.”
He said that on September 11, 2011 the police raided the site where they found 13 workers. They ranged from those who had been recruited just the night before to men, who had been working for the Connors family for 10 years.
Mr Gumpert said: “It is clear, if the prosecution case is well founded, that over the years there have been dozens, perhaps over a hundred, workers who have been recruited, whose labour has been exploited and who have been the subject of threats, violence and coercion.”
He said the defence will argue that there was no servitude, no forced labour, but rather a rough bargain which enable men who would otherwise have wasted their lives away in drink and dependency to have meaningful lives worth living, as part of a travelling community, and within it as part of the Connors family.
But he said: “The prosecution said that various forms of authority and intimidation were used and that, in the case of some of the victims the combination of their impoverished social contacts, their lowered self esteem and their fear of the determined violent revenge to which those who crossed the Connors family in any way were subject, meant that, although they were not always physically imprisoned, they lacked the resources, or even the will to get away from men who were corralling, exploiting and infantilising them.”
Tommy Connors Senior, 53, and three of his sons, Tommy Junior, 27, James, 25, Patrick, 21, are on trial.
All four defendants face six charges – three of conspiracy to hold a person in servitude and three of conspiracy to require a person to perform forced labour.
The offences are alleged to have taken place between April 6, 2010 and September 11, 2011 and involved four victims who cannot be named for legal reasons.
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