“Hostage” and “slave” in his own house, a paralyzed man lived through hell because of his wife

These are striking images taken in 2018. We see a 40-year-old man, dressed in a Manchester football shirt, long hair, unshaven, long nails. Two years later, equally stunning shots would show the same individual lying in a bed without a mattress in the middle boxes of clothes. Behind the lens, actress Kate Somerset-Holmes is keen to document the horrific conditions in which her brother lives, Tom, who has cerebral palsy (CMI) and is partially blind : dust, grime, ashes… He is a man “disoriented” And “very, very thin” (43 kg), reports the DailyMailwhich she discovers when she walks through the door of the house he shares with his wife, Sarah, 49, in Chichester in the south of England. According to prosecutors, his wife and lover, George Webb50 years, were spending their allowances to buy lingerie and DJ equipment while he was forced to feed on crisps and allowed to take only one shower per weekwhen he needed round-the-clock care.

Tom Somerset-Holmes was saved from this affair during an operation carried out jointly by his family, the police and social services. A maneuver who had all “the characteristics of the extraction ofa person taken hostage“. At the end of a four-week long trial, it took more than a dozen hours for the juror to declare lovers guilty of holding a person slavery or in bondage. George Webb was also accused of abuse by a caregiver ; Sarah Somerset-Holmes executive assistant, of having encouraged him for two years, from 2018 to 2020. The latter was however found not guilty following allegations that she would have “looted“£12,000 in her husband’s inheritance. The verdict still satisfied Tom’s family, overwhelmed with emotion. “I am very satisfied with the verdict. Justice has been served”said the victim, also moved, after the announcement of the verdict.

How was Tom Somerset-Holmes taken hostage in his own home?

During the trial, prosecutor Paul Cavin KC accused the lovers of taking “total control of life [de Tom Somerset-Holmes]as one would with a dog”adding: “He was also ostracized”. Thus began a terrible hostage-taking at home, as evidenced by the correspondence between the defendants. “Remember we’re just using it”, wrote Sarah to George, who entered the life of the Somerset-Holmes as a caregiver, in 2016, a service paid for by social services. Several witnesses testified that the couple used to regularly go away for the weekendleaving Tom, without his glasses, bathe in his urine in the middle ofa bedroom dark and dusty. “When I asked for help, [George Webb] did it very quickly, like it was a chorerevealed the brother of Kate Somerset-Holmes facing the judge. I spent whole weeks without getting out of bed, except when I desperately needed to go to the bathroom. At one point, I was in bed for five weeks.” And to add: “I told Sarah that was not acceptable, but she just shrugged.” The diabolical lovers will be condemned within a few months.