Tom Somerset-How was held hostage at his home and isolated to his bed with filthy sheets while being physically and verbally abused by wife Sarah and George Webb, hired as his carer.
calls it, took place almost exactly three years ago. It's a dramatic word, one more commonly associated with hostage situations. But to all intents and purposes, a 'hostage' is what Tom was for four harrowing years.
George Webb, 50 and Sarah Somerset-How, 49 were both found guilty of holding a person in slavery or servitude and jailed for 11 years Sarah and George were subsequently arrested, and last month, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the UK, both were found guilty at Portsmouth Crown Court of holding a person in slavery or servitude.
'Everything that I went through in those four years just amplified how I felt about myself already,' he says. 'Too physically disabled to be out in the world, but too cognitively intelligent to be in a care home. It can be a lonely place.' Unlike Kate, however, Tom suffered oxygen deprivation to his brain at birth and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. From the age of around eight, he has required a specially adapted electric wheelchair, and has had to undergo around 12 corrective surgeries. In recent years, he has also lost his eyesight, although can still see outlines.
Did he love her? 'Yes,' he says resolutely. 'I think, too, there was an element of 'Oh my God, somebody actually wants to marry me'. So I jumped in with both feet. Certainly, by 2016, when Sarah hired the heavy-set, tattooed George Webb to be Tom's weekday carer, the physical side of the couple's relationship was all but over.
Horrifyingly, Tom heard them having sex, but when he confronted them they just laughed. In the meantime, Tom was largely left confined to bed, with the curtains closed.Food was sporadic; hygiene even more so. At one stage he went five weeks without a shower, and he was frequently left in soiled sheets.'They gave me just enough food and drink to keep me going, but that was it,' he says.
'But even if I had wanted to tell the truth, all of my stuff — my messages, my calls — was monitored.''It said, 'Am I no longer welcome in your house?' I couldn't say anything but it broke my heart,' Tom says. So egregiously had the duo sapped his physical and emotional strength that Tom says he has no doubt they would happily have let him die on their watch.
'We exchanged messages but, perhaps because we hadn't been in touch for a while, she read between the lines of what I'd written, and was concerned enough to call Mum,' says Tom.
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