'My wife and carer kept me prisoner in home for 4 years while they had affair'

29 August 2023 , 08:51

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Tom Somerset-How, with his mum Helen, has spoken of his ordeal at the hands of his wife (Image: David Clarke/Solent News)

A partly blind disabled man who was kept prisoner in his own home for years while his wife carried on an affair with his carer has spoken of his torment.

Tom Somerset-How, who has cerebral palsy and requires 24 hour care, was “treated like property” by Sarah Somerset-How, 49, and George Webb, 50. A court case earlier this year heard how he was not able to brush his teeth for a year and was only allowed a shower once a week.

After spending “95% of his time trapped in his filthy bed, he eventually raised the alarm sparking a rescue operation which the court heard was akin to a “hostage extraction”. His wife and carer were convicted of holding a person in slavery or servitude in May.

Sarah Somerset-How, 49 was found guilty of holding Tom in slavery/servitude (PA)

George Webb was Tom's live-n carer - and his wife's lover (PA)

Now Mr Somerset-How has spoken of his ordeal at the hands of those he believed he could trust most. Speaking to MailOnline, he said: “'When it really sunk in, that this was my life, I wanted to end it all, but I couldn't even do that without help.

“Everything I went through in those four years just amplified how I felt about myself already, too physically disabled to be out in the world, but too cognitively intelligent to be in a care home. It can be a lonely place.

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“They gave me just enough food and drink to keep me going, but that was it, I can't remember a lot of the stuff, because I've tried to block it out.”

He added to keep up the charade, at Christmas and birthdays he would be cleaned up and taken to see his family. However, once it was finished his life went back to as it had been.

The squalid conditions Mr Somerset-How was forced to live in (Sussex Police)

During the trial, the couple's lawyers attempted to have the slavery charges dismissed, arguing there was no evidence Mr Somerset How was being treated as a 'possession'. Paul Cavin KC, prosecuting, said: "This statute was drafted broadly and for good reason, because in the past they had very narrow definitions.

“The Crown says both slavery and servitude can be made here. "It is servitude by coercion by keeping him in a position where he was providing a service.

“He was allowing them to live off him. By keeping him alive he provided them with a roof over their head.

"It is the use of him and effective imprisonment of him, keeping him away from his family, that allowed them to use his benefits. That is why this applies to both slavery and servitude.

"If there was no benefit to the defendants and they decided to have an affair and keep the partner in a room and he was disabled that would be slavery because it is a complete denial of autonomy. If they hadn't enslaved him, he would have dismissed Webb and maybe divorced his wife.

"This is a man who had all his autonomy taken away from him. Total ownership had been taken over him in a way that a master does over a dog when he puts him in the kitchen."

The cruel pair were jailed for 11 years each.

Antony Clements-Thrower