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Last Monday's Guardian published the following startling report:

Many migrant workers in UK are modern-day slaves

Thousands of foreign domestic workers are living as slaves in Britain, being abused sexually, physically and psychologically by employers, according to an investigation...

More than 15,000 migrant workers come to Britain every year to earn money to send back to their families. But according to a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation, many endure conditions that campaigners say amount to modern-day slavery.

Kalayaan, a charity based in west London that helps and advises migrant domestic workers, registers around 350 new workers each year.

About 20% report being physically abused or assaulted, including being burnt with irons, threatened with knives, and having boiling water thrown at them.

"Two-thirds of the domestic workers we see report being psychologically abused," said Jenny Moss, a community advocate for the charity. "That means they've been threatened and humiliated, shouted at constantly and called dog, donkey, stupid, illiterate."

A similar proportion say they were not allowed out alone and have never had a day off. Nearly three-quarters say they were paid less than £50 a week.

"The first thing to understand when we're talking about slavery is that we're not using a metaphor," said Aidan McQuade from Anti-Slavery International. "Many of the instances of domestic servitude we find in this country are forced labour – a classification that includes retention of passports and wages, threat of denunciation and restriction of movement and isolation."

Lobby groups and charities say that a large proportion of domestic workers are paid less than £50 a week for working 20-hour days. Others have their wages withheld completely. In some cases, the workers are young people who were trafficked over to the UK as children and forced to endure years of violence and forced labour.

The programme also investigates claims that foreign diplomats are among the worst offenders. Their workers, unlike those brought in on a domestic worker visa, cannot change their employer and face being homeless or being deported if they escape. The Dispatches study says it is also extremely difficult to prosecute diplomats for treating their workers as slaves.

Accurate figures are hard to establish because the abuse happens behind closed doors. But campaigners say that every year, hundreds of domestic workers run away from employees they claim have mistreated them.

Marissa Begonia left three young children in the Philippines when she came to Britain as a domestic worker 16 years ago. Now the head of Justice 4 Domestic Workers, a new campaigning organisation run by and for migrant workers, Begonia says most of their clients are forced to work abroad, without ever seeing their families, because of extreme poverty in their home countries.

"It's a matter of life and death," said Begonia. "You have two choices only: you watch your children die slowly, starving, or you leave them and come to the UK to work to make sure your children survive." The Metropolitan police specialised crime unit specifically targets forced labour, including domestic workers. "We've now got 10 cases of domestic servitude we are investigating," said detective chief superintendent Richard Martin, who heads the unit.

"Some victims are being chained to the kitchen sink, working seven days a week, 20 hours a day, for little or no pay. We have had cases of workers being forced to eat scraps off the table, so some of them are not even fed properly, and are assaulted and abused. We've had cases where women have been raped."

Children are also being bought to the UK to work in conditions of slavery. Christina was trafficked from Nigeria to London when she was just 12 years old. She says the woman in charge of her was of Nigerian origin, but worked as a British civil servant first with the Home Office and then Customs and Excise.

"I got beaten up all the time but I had no choice: I had nowhere to go," said Christina, who worked for the woman for five years, until she escaped in 2005. "She hit me with a frying pan and with a belt, so many, many times. It was horrible. I wanted to die."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/aug/30/migrant-workers-modern-day-slavery