On September 11, at least 200 policemen in England took part in a raid after long investigations yielded evidence that people were enslaved, working against their own will in extremely poor and filthy conditions without any sort of pay with the exception of a few scraps of food at a travelers camp site called Green Acres Caravan Park near Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire.

Twenty four men of English, Russian, Romanian and Polish backgrounds were found to be incredibly emaciated and living in unheated places such as the caravans, kennels and horse boxes without any running water.

The twenty four individuals were immediately escorted to the nearest hospital for urgent medical treatment.

According to authorities, some of the former slaves may have been living in these conditions for as long as 15 years after they were tricked from being homeless to becoming “workers”. After that, their hair was cut off for unknown reasons and then forced to work 12 hours per day and stuffed into caravans.

Based on further investigation, the police concluded that the former slaves were threatened to stay and continue working.

Four men and one woman were detained on suspicion of holding these 24 people as slaves and are currently arrested under the Slavery and Servitude Act of 2010 which means those convicted can face up to 14 years in prison.

However, after discovering firearms, narcotics and other items including a large sum of money indicating the involvement of a possible crime ring or organization, the authorities are calling for more investigations into catching possibly more suspects.

Some suspicion is on Irish travelers who were at the site recently.

As for the people living nearby, shock has muted most conversations regarding the discovery of slavery literally in their own backyard as human trafficking cases are thought to rarely make the news or occur at all in developed countries.

Yet reports alleging that the same site that was just raided was a hot spot of human trafficking have been circulating since three years prior. Some of the reports were actually filed by those who had been forced to work at the site and had successfully escaped.

(Cover Photo: TalkTalk)