Abused, left without sufficient food and drink and forced to live in squalid conditions. Tom Somerset-How had been living a nightmare of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of his wife and carer for four years.

Mr Somerset-How has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and requires 24-hour care. In 2016, his wife Sarah Somerset-How hired George Webb as a live-in carer at their home in Chichester, West Sussex. But after the pair began an affair, they began to isolate Mr Somerset-How from his family for their own financial gain.

Following a trial the pair were jailed for 11 years on Friday.

In his own words, he explains the ordeal he went through and how he escaped.

I was pretty much alone every day. They would leave a sports bottle of juice and a little bit to eat.

I was literally in bed for 95% of four years.

I say 95% because there were times where they had to get me to see family, like at Christmas.

They’d get me out of bed, get me dressed and cleaned up, then as soon as the event was done, I’d be put straight back into bed and left there.

Sarah actually said at one point when we were driving back from my mum’s: “Right that’s my job done for the month.”

I was basically under duress and threat, and Sarah said: “You do not make any phone calls unless I’m with you.”

So I would use my iPad and talk to my friends online, and I talked to my friend Gina.

Within 24 hours, I got a call from mum. Then I got a call from a social worker two days after and he said: “Do you want to leave?”

Before he even finished the sentence, I said: “Oh my God, yes.”

I wasn’t emotionally ready for them to literally bang down the door with everybody swarming in. But I wasn’t quite sure how Webb would react as he was volatile.

I’d given the social worker a heads up. I said: “Look, if you’re going to do this, you cannot leave my side during the entire process.”

To his credit, the social worker did not leave my side.

Tom Somerset-How speaks out about abuse he received after wife and carer jailed under modern slavery laws

I’m seeing a counsellor now. People say time’s a healer. But time isn’t a healer. Time just teaches you how to carry the damage better.

I need some form of closure to move through it because I will never live past it and that closure will help me carry the weight in a more manageable way.

I don’t want to just live and exist. I want to help people, which is why I want to use this case, which has made legal history, to go forward and campaign for people who don’t have the opportunity to get out of the situation that I was in.

There needs to be an official system that can flag up, not directly, but indirectly raise the alarm. Then social services could find a way to extract them.

Something good has to come out of all this.

The wife and carer of a disabled man who they enslaved and left in squalid conditions have been jailed.

Sarah Somerset-How and her lover George Webb left Tom Somerset-How bedbound and malnourished in his home in Chichester, West Sussex, for four years.

Mr Somerset-How, 40, said he lived “under duress and threat” and was forced into “survival mode”.

At Portsmouth Crown Court, Ms Somerset-How, 49, and Webb, 40, both of Bognor Regis, were sentenced to 11 years.

In what is thought to be the first prosecution of its kind, the pair were convicted of wilful neglect and holding a person in slavery or servitude.

In addition, Webb was also convicted of causing actual bodily harm.

When he was rescued, Mr Somerset-How weighed just 6st 10lbs (43kg).

“I was literally in bed for 95% of four years. There was one point where I didn’t get showered in five weeks,” he said.

“The emotional toll’s been ridiculous and the psychological toll. It’s completely, utterly destroyed me. There’s no retribution that will ever equalise what they’ve done to me.”

He added: “As far as George goes, because he was a carer, he should never, ever have the opportunity to do this to anybody again.”

The trial heard that the pair’s treatment of Mr Somerset-How, who has cerebral palsy, requires 24-hour care and uses an electric wheelchair, was uncovered by a friend as well as by the victim’s sister Kate Somerset-Holmes, an actress who has appeared in Silent Witness and Holby City.

Over four years, Mr Somerset-How was physically and psychologically abused, left without sufficient food and drink and forced to live in squalid conditions after Webb was hired as a live-in carer in 2016, the court heard.

The lovers took advantage of him for their own financial gains and separated him from his family, who reported the situation to the police in August 2020.

Police said texts between the defendants’ mobile phones showed they had started a sexual relationship together and intentionally neglected Mr Somerset-How to take drugs and plan nights away.

In sentencing, Judge William Ashworth said Mr Somerset-How was “held in slavery, kept in bed, frequently in his own urine and excrement, unwashed, unkempt and absent from contact from other humans”.

He told the court that Mr Somerset-How had suffered “serious psychological harm”, was “humiliated” and treated as “a cow to be milked”.

Prior to sentencing, Mr Somerset-How’s victim impact statement was read out by the prosecution barrister, Paul Calvin.

“I go to my room and just scream,” it said.

The statement also said that Mr Somerset-How had had suicidal thoughts and been left with significant debt.

Det Con Cheyne Garrett said she was shocked when she realised the scale of the “depravity” shown by the couple.

“He was stuck in that room. His money was spent. It is despicable and it shouldn’t have happened,” she said.