A teenage girl with learning difficulties spent more than 25 years working as a “house slave” for a woman and her 10 children, a court has heard.
From 1995 until 2021, the woman – now in her 40s – was trapped in the squalid home of 56-year-old Amanda Wixon in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.
There she endured regular beatings and was hit with a broom handle, knocking out her teeth, the jury was told.
She also had washing up liquid squirted down her throat, bleach splashed on her face, and her head repeatedly shaved against her will.
Trapped in a ‘prison cell’
The home in the Priors Park area was overcrowded and dirty, with plaster hanging off the mouldy walls, and rubbish strewn across the back garden.
The woman lived off scraps, and despite the grim conditions, was not allowed to leave, nor even to wash, doing so secretly at night.
Police said the woman’s benefits had also been paid into Wixon’s bank account from the late 1990s, with her receiving a “considerable sum” of money over the years.
Officers were tipped off about the woman’s situation by one of Wixon’s sons, and went to the house in March 2021.
They described the woman’s bedroom as looking like a “prison cell”, with the other bedrooms also untidy and dirty.
She told police: “I don’t want to be here. I don’t feel safe. Mandy hits me all the time. I don’t like it.
“I haven’t washed for years. She doesn’t let me.”
‘All skin and bone’
Like others in the house, including her tormentor, the woman had lost many of her teeth due to poor dental hygiene.
Her lips and face were scarred, and she had large calluses on her feet and ankles from time spent on her hands and knees cleaning floors.
One former neighbour, Kiran Atwal, remembered seeing the victim as a child, but had not seen her for 10 years, and was unaware she still lived there.
Another described the woman as “looking like something out of a concentration camp”, while a third neighbour said she was all “skin and bone” with a shaved head.
Disappeared into a ‘black hole’
Sam Jones, prosecuting, told Gloucester Crown Court: “She was kept in and prevented from leaving the address.
“She was assaulted and hit many, many times and forced to work with threats of violence.
“She had been denied food and the ability to wash over many years.”
Social services were involved with the family in the late 1990s, the jury heard, but there were no records of any contact since.
There were no medical or dental records for the woman, and she had not seen a doctor in two decades.
“The fact remains that nothing was done by social services,” Mr Jones said.
“The lack of records from the hospital, the doctor and the dentist, or any involvement with social services for 20 years provides further support of her never being allowed to leave the house.”
“By the late 1990s it appears the woman disappeared into a black hole. Not a single meeting that left a record or a single sighting of her outside the house,” he added.
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Wixon denied a charge of false imprisonment, two of requiring a person to perform forced or compulsory labour, and four of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
A jury acquitted her of one assault charge but found her guilty of the others.
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Abuse or neglect
Wixon blamed an estranged son for suggesting things to the woman.
Edward Hollingsworth, defending, said the case against his client was a “tale of fantasy and lies” and called the woman’s allegations a “child-like fantasy”.
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He said the defendant’s life was “much more complicated and nuanced” than alleged, and the case was one of neglect rather than abuse.
He argued the whole family lived in squalor and that the bedrooms of Wixon’s own children were equally as bad.
“Her other children were not vaccinated, not attending school, and had rotting teeth and head lice,” he said.
Judge Ian Lawrie KC said there was a “Dickensian quality” to the story after the victim left her own “dysfunctional family”.
The victim now lives with a foster family, attends college and has been on holidays abroad.
But her ordeal has left her with nightmares, and a compulsion to clean constantly.
Wixon was released on conditional bail and will be sentenced on 12 March.
