British police have arrested a couple on suspicion of holding three "extremely traumatized" women captive for more than 30 years, Scotland Yard announced Thursday.
One of the women -- a 30-year-old Briton -- "appears to have been in servitude for her entire life," Metropolitan Police Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland said. She and the other two women, a 57-year-old from Ireland and a 69-year-old from Malaysia, have been taken to a place of safety and are being cared for by a charity, police said.
The man and woman arrested are both 67, police said. They were taken into custody at their home in the south London borough of Lambeth and were being held as part of an investigation into slavery and domestic servitude, police said.
Their names were not released, and police said only that they are not British nationals. They were later released on bail.
Police said they'd been alerted in October to the situation by Freedom Charity, which got a phone call from a woman saying "she had been held against her will in a house in London for more than 30 years." Freedom Charity spokeswoman Aneeta Prem said the organization had taken "immediate action" to plan a rescue after learning of the women's situation.
"Facilitating their escape was achieved using utmost sensitivity and secrecy and with the safety of the women as our primary concern," she said, describing the work of those involved as "outstanding."
Source: CNN
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