Doctor and husband jailed for appalling exploitation of ‘slave’ nanny

A family GP and her husband were jailed for a total of just 15 months for the ‘appalling’ exploitation of a slave nanny.

Dr Ayodeji Adewakun, 44, and Abimbola Adewakun, 48, lured Lydia Ogundowala, 29, to the UK from Nigeria with promises of a £500 monthly wage which she hoped would support her family following the death of her mother.

But the couple confiscated her passport as soon as she arrived in February 2007 and subjected her to ‘constant demands and verbal abuse’, said prosecutor Caroline Carberry QC.

She managed to escape two years later after finally being paid just £350 – a pittance compared to the £53,000 she would have earned if paid the national minimum wage for the same arduous hours each week.

The couple, whose careers now lie in ruins, were convicted of trafficking Ms Ogundowala by a jury at Southwark Crown Court last month.

Judge Martin Beddoe said the exploitation of ‘vulnerable, decent people, like Lydia’ trying to improve their lives and those of their families ‘is to be abhorred and it is to be deterred’.

The pair’s daughter fled the packed public gallery in hysterics as Dr Adewakun was jailed for nine months while her husband was jailed for six months.

Ms Ogundowala met the Adewakuns during their visits back to Nigeria where her father was employed in a similar role by Mr Adewakun’s parents.

The jury heard she was promised £500 per month in a similar arrangement before being made ‘subject to constant demands and verbal abuse’ from Mrs Adewakun.

She described a typical working day involving cleaning the house, cooking for the family, preparing the children for school, running errands and sometimes working through to midnight before being allowed to finally go to bed.

After being threatened she was ‘lucky not to be beaten like the last girl’, she finally demanded payment in February 2009 – after two years without receiving any money.

A bank account was then opened with a £50 deposit followed by three payments of £100 prompting Ms Ogundowala to flee the home.

When she finally managed to get her passport back she sought help from a charity and an investigation was opened into the Adewakuns.

Jurors also heard the couple first persuaded Iyabo Olatunji to come and care for their two children in Erith, southeast London, years earlier in 2005.

Ms Olatunji, 37, told the court she had been promised wages of £450 a month but she too was given just £20 per week.

She claimed she was later forced to work all day cleaning the house, cook for the family and was even woken if the doctor got home late and wanted a snack.

Ms Carberry said if she been paid the national minimum wage for the 12 hours’ work she claimed to have carried out every single day the amount ‘comes to just shy of £53,000’.

Had she been paid at the same rate for the contracted hours she could have been expecting to earn £36,656, minus the £350 she did receive.

The prosecutor added that her lower agreed rate of £500 per month over the 28 months would still have fetched £14,000 in wages.

Dr Adewakun, based at the Abbey Wood surgery, told the court that the two women were brought to the UK from Nigeria ‘for a better life’.

The GP claimed the girls were brought over to give them more opportunities in the UK, insisting she paid each the same wages as her previous European au-pair, who was hired from a website.

‘I just decided that I wanted somebody from Nigeria,’ she said.

‘I looked on the website but when I spoke to the person they said we had to arrange for them to come to the country.

‘We would have to contact the person we wanted directly, speak to them and start making arrangements for them to come to the country – we had to do that ourselves, the au-pair website wouldn’t do that.

‘Sincerely, I first thought it would be better for me to get somebody that I already knew, because it would give them the opportunity to come to the country and better their lives.’

She also claimed to have pulled the contract template from Google and denied Ms Carberry’s suggestion the Nigerian girls were targeted because ‘no European woman would take [her] physical and verbal abuse’.

Dr Adewakun added: ‘I have never done these things.

‘I have never, ever treated anyone like these two girls have said I treated them.’

Michael Newport, defending the GP, confirmed she had been suspended by the General Medical Council and it was ‘almost certain’ she would be booted from the profession following her conviction.

‘Her entire period of studying and work has been for the benefit of the public,’ he said of the doctor.

‘This is not a doctor who has decided to opt out at an early stage and work in private practice.

‘In my submission her hard work shows that she is someone dedicated to serving the public.

‘The public gallery is full, and in that public gallery is a combination of people from all walks of life who have come her to support the Adewakuns.’

The court heard the couple’s eldest daughter, their pastor, friends, colleagues and patients had all turned out for the hearing.

‘This conviction does not sum up Dr Adewakun’s life,’ Mr Newport continued.

‘This conviction of course is her ruin but there is more to her than that.’

Andrew Selby, for Mr Adewakun, said ‘he, like his wife, finds his life in ruin’ but pointed to the fact that Lydia ‘had nothing but good words’ about him as being grounds for sparing him prison.

But jailing the pair, Judge Beddoe said: ‘She was brought here on false pretences, both of you intending that once she was here she should be exploited – as she undoubtedly was and as soon as she arrived.

‘She was very young, she spoke only poor English and she had not been out of her region, let alone out of Nigeria beforehand and it seems to me she had no real knowledge of where she really was save that it was somewhere on the fringes of London and in the United Kingdom.

‘She had relied on your promises, endorsed by the purported legal contract with which she was supplied and no doubt was a great influence on her father in him determining that she should come to the UK.

‘She relied on your promises, intending to use the opportunity she believed that you were genuinely giving to her not only to help herself, but to fulfil the duty she felt she had as the eldest child to support her father and her siblings following the death of her mother.

‘She was, however, appallingly exploited.

‘Her passport was withheld and hidden from her and the income she was promised was, more or less but for £300, never provided.

‘She was deliberately kept in social isolation and she was from time to time threatened by you, Dr Adewakun, as you, Mr Adewakun, was clearly aware with violence if she did not do as you expected and with the shame, potentially, of being sent home if she should be dismissed by you and the purpose of her visa be undermined.

‘After she had, in desperation and penniless, found the courage to leave you after the best part of two years and eight months, one of the aggravating features and seriously unpleasant features of this case is that her passport continued to be deliberately withheld and not returned to her until her visa had expired.’

The judge added: ‘Her distress from all that you did to her was compounded by the knowledge that she did not succeed in the noble objective that she had for coming here and working for you, namely to send money home and improve the lives of members of her family.’

The couple, both of (21) St. Catherine’s Road, Erith, denied two counts of trafficking a person into the UK for exploitation but were convicted on one by the jury.

Dr Adewakun was jailed for nine months while her nurse husband was jailed for six months.

They were also ordered to pay £20,000 to Ms Ogundowala and costs of £2,520 each.

ends