UK court jails Nigerian pastor for torturing maids

Posted by admin Top Stories Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

A female Nigerian pastor who brought children from her country to work as slaves for her in the United Kingdom has been jailed for 11 years, the Mail of London reports.

Lucy Adeniji, 45, forced her victims to toil for up to 21 hours a day – washing, cooking, cleaning her five-bedroom home and caring for her five children.

Adeniji, an illegal immigrant herself, also tortured the slaves, the youngest aged 11.

She regularly beat them and one was attacked with pepper in her eyes and genitals. A court heard she ‘stole the childhoods’ of her victims.

Adeniji, known at her evangelical church, TLCC Ministries, as the Reverend Lucy Williams, worked part-time for Newham Council in east London as a youth worker and was outwardly a ‘pillar of the community’.

But she was branded an evil hypocrite by Judge Simon Oliver at Isleworth Crown Court, west London.

Jailing her for 11 and a half years, he said, “Anyone who attended court could not fail to be affected by the pain and suffering these girls had gone through. I remember Dorcus (one of the victims) screaming so badly I had to stop the case for the rest of the day.

“You sat in the dock completely and utterly unmoved by it. That’s why I’d say you are a complete and utter hypocrite.

“You are an evil woman. I’ve no doubt you have ruined these two girls’ lives. They will suffer from the consequences of the behaviour you meted out to them for the rest of their lives.”

Adeniji faces automatic deportation at the end of her jail term and a fraud investigation.

She entered the UK from Nigeria with her husband Eric in 1986 as a tourist and then used false passports to remain.

The court heard that initially she paid East European au pairs at her house in Barking, east London

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