‘I was trapped inside for months’: Shocking story of nurse tricked into modern slavery in the UK

7 December 2024, 10:58

Loretta Okeke was 23 and working as a nurse at a hospital in Lagos when a one-in-700,000 occurrence struck, radically changing the course of her life.

A woman came in to give birth to quadruplets, who were premature, in autumn 2019. One of the children had a hole in his heart, needing additional care, which Loretta gave.

The mother, the wife of a Nigerian politician, was impressed with Loretta’s work and offered her a second job - to come to their home and look after the children.

“I was happy with the offer,” Loretta told LBC, “especially as I could combine both jobs, because I was only working three days a week at the hospital.”

Loretta was from Anambra state and had moved several hundred miles to Lagos, the country’s largest city, to work as a fertility nurse, leaving her family and main source of support behind.

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She had also been planning a move to the UK and was applying for a visa and preparing for an English test.

But after several months of working with the family, looking after the quadruplets, the mother made Loretta a proposition - to come with her and the children to the UK as a paid carer for the quadruplets.

Loretta said she was “very happy with the opportunity”. They agreed that after six months, the family would apply for her visa to be renewed and she would look for nursing jobs in the UK. It seemed like a good plan for a young nurse seeking to make a career for herself, and they made the move in December.

Little did she know she was on her way to becoming one of an estimated 122,000 victims of modern slavery in the UK. And it didn’t take long for the warning signs to appear.

“When we got to the airport, that was the first place I started seeing changes in behaviour from my employer [the mother],” Loretta said. “She slighted me at every opportunity, and she would talk harshly to me.”

When they arrived at the new house, located in Dartford, on the outskirts of south-east London, her employer's behaviour worsened. The mother immediately confiscated Loretta’s passport, explaining she wished to “to keep it safe”.

“At that point I didn’t think too much about it,” Loretta said, “I’d known her for a while and I trusted her.”

Her workload also became much more onerous. Instead of just looking after the children, she was washing, cooking, cleaning, without a break or a day off. But even at this point, Loretta said: “I treated them as my family, I still didn’t really take any offence.”

It was only when she wasn’t paid at the end of her first month that Loretta realised something was truly wrong for the first time. She spoke to her employer, who avoided giving a proper answer.

Loretta said she was only allowed to leave the house a handful of times over the course of several months - and only when accompanied. Her life became increasingly isolated.

“I had no communication or relation with anyone outside the house,” she said. “I never left.”

After five months, Loretta confronted her employer again and asked her when she was going pay her and renew her visa, worried about overstaying and losing her chance to ever work as a nurse.

But the woman told her simply that they weren’t going to renew the visa. “She told me that I’m in the house to carry on taking care of the babies, this will go on for years, and at some point they will find a way to legalise my stay in the UK.”

Loretta added: “I was shocked, and I just wanted to go back home.

“I was trying to find help. But because I barely left the house, I was never alone... There was no space.”

There were a few agonising moments when Loretta was briefly alone with an outsider and thought about telling them her story. One time a health visitor came to check up on the quadruplets, and Loretta was asked to show her out.

“During the little space of time, I wanted to open up and speak to her, but the time was very short, I was very scared. What if someone comes down and sees me. I said nothing - it was a missed opportunity.”

Eventually Loretta remembered she had a Facebook friend, also from Nigeria but now living in the UK, who had given her advice previously on how to get a job here. She contacted him online to ask for help, and he told her to demand her salary and her passport, and if they didn’t agree to renew her visa, to make it clear she wanted to go back to Nigeria. He also gave her his phone number and said that she could call him.

But at this point the family disconnected her devices from the internet, isolating her even further. She confronted the woman again, demanding her salary and passport once more. The woman called her politician husband in Nigeria and put Loretta on the phone with him.

She said: “It was a heated moment, he was threatening me that he was going to call the police to say that I was causing problems.

“I told myself not to be scared, not to succumb to the threat. I told him ‘thank God that we are not in Nigeria, we are in the UK where things are working right and police do their job and will be on my side.'”

At that point the mother “pounced” on Loretta, pulling her by the hair and hitting her, with the onslaught only ending when she was torn away by her friends who were in the house at the time.

Loretta was fully determined to leave and packed her bags.

The family and their friends blocked her, with the carer shouting out of the window for help from passers-by. At this point, to avoid a scene, they finally let her walk out - throwing her passport out of the door behind her, but taking her phone.

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Loretta was now out on the street in Dartford, with £20 to her name and no phone, in the midst of the first Covid lockdown.

She managed to borrow a stranger’s mobile to call her nursing friend, who urged her to go to the police.

They took her in, fed her and found her some temporary housing. After a few days police put her in contact with a charity that supported her and helped find her accommodation in Bradford in West Yorkshire.

“At that period I had a shelter over my head, but I was very traumatised, I was depressed, and had no appetite to eat,” she said. “This carried on for a few months, then I told myself I had to pick myself up to move forward.”

Loretta was given a small allowance by the charity and saved up enough to register for the English exam. She also took a nursing competency exam. Meanwhile the police had contacted the Home Office, who extended her visa.

In 2021, she found a job at a hospital in Basingstoke in Hampshire, and in 2022 she was recognised by the Home Office as a victim of modern slavery. She is now being supported by the charity Migrant Help, and works for them too.

Loretta has since moved to Worcester, where she continues to work as a nurse.

“Life started looking better,” she said, “although I was scared because now I am in the UK, even though I am safe, how about my family back home. The husband of the family is a strong politician in Nigeria. If he can’t get to me, maybe he can get to my family.

“I am happy, although in some part of my mind, I still think about what happened a lot. I didn’t have any kind of closure on what happened.”

She is not even sure what happened to the couple, or if they received any legal punishment for enslaving her.

Asked for advice on anyone who may be a victim of modern slavery today, Loretta said: “For someone who is already in this situation, the only way forward is to seek help.

“In my own situation, they wanted me to keep quiet. I know within myself that the only way I can come out is by seeking help. People are busy with their lives. The only way is to seek help.

“Getting scared will make it worse, you just have to be courageous.”

Loretta said that people should also be very careful if given a ‘job offer’ like hers.

“Especially if the promises look very shiny, too good to be true, just take some steps back. “Seek for some advice from specialists, from family, make some investigations - do not trust people, even if they look genuine or friendly.”

Loretta escaped through bravery and good luck, but many more victims of modern slavery will not get out, according to Migrant Help, the charity that supports her now.

For every one person who is saved, another seven will not be a.

Modern slavery can take many forms, including criminal exploitation, forced labour, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude, as in Loretta’s case.

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Rabiya Ravat, who is the director of modern slavery services at Migrant Help, warned that it’s “not just a problem overseas – it’s happening here, in the UK, in our towns and cities, and often to British citizens, too.”

The government brought in the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to ‘tackle, prevent and disrupt’ the practice. It was thought to be world-leading legislation at the time.

But Britain has fallen behind in the nine years since, a parliamentary committee reported in October. They urged the government update the law to make companies do more due diligence in their supply chains, among other recommendations.

Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway, the chairman of the committee, said: “The UK is falling behind other countries and victims are paying the price. This is not acceptable in a decent society… the UK must become a world leader in the battle against modern slavery once again.

If you suspect someone is trapped in modern slavery and in need of help, call the confidential 24/7 Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline on 08000 121 700​. Signs to look out for include:

• Isolation and restricted freedom of movement
• Reluctance to make eye contact or interact with others
• Fear and unwilling to seek help
• Signs of physical or psychological abuse
• Excessive working hours with little or no breaks
• Poor living conditions
• Unusual travel arrangements.