Woman found guilty of keeping ‘house slave’ for 25 years

A mother of ten has been found guilty of keeping a teenage girl as a ‘house slave’ for more than 25 years in Gloucestershire.

The woman, who is now in her mid-40s, was 16 when she moved into the squalid home of Amanda Wixon, 56, in 1995, where she remained until 2021.

Gloucester Crown Court heard the woman was regularly beaten and also hit with a broom handle, knocking out her teeth.

Washing-up liquid would be squirted down her throat, bleach splashed on her face, and she had her head repeatedly shaved against her will.

Her food was limited by Wixon, and she lived off scraps, could not leave the house and was forced to secretly wash at night.

The family home in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, was overcrowded, in a squalid condition, with mould on the walls, plaster hanging off and rubbish in the back garden, a court heard.

Wixon denied a charge of false imprisonment, two charges of requiring a person to perform forced or compulsory labour, and four charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

A jury acquitted her of one assault charge but found her guilty of the others.

Wixon was released on conditional bail and will be sentenced on March 12.

Prosecutor Sam Jones told the jury: ‘She was kept in and prevented from leaving the address, and she was assaulted and hit many, many times and forced to work with the threats of violence. She had been denied food and the ability to wash for many years.’

Judge Ian Lawrie KC said there was a ‘Dickensian quality’ to the story after the woman, who has learning difficulties, left her own ‘dysfunctional family’.

Police went to the house in March 2021 after receiving a report from one of Wixon’s sons about the victim.

There, officers said they found a bedroom more akin to a ‘prison cell’, and the victim told police: ‘I don’t want to be here. I don’t feel safe. Mandy hits me all the time. I don’t like it. I haven’t washed for years. She doesn’t let me.’

The court heard social services were involved with the family in the late 1990s, but there were no records of any contact since.

“The fact remains that nothing was done by social services,” Mr Jones said.

There were no medical records or dental records for the woman, and she had not seen a doctor in two decades.

‘The lack of records from the hospital, the doctor and the dentist or any involvement with social services for 20 years provides further support of her never being allowed to leave the house,’ Mr Jones said.

‘By the late 1990s, it appears the woman disappeared into a black hole. Not a single meeting that left a record or a single sighting of her outside the house.’

When she was discovered by police, she was ‘very close’ to being underweight and had scarring to her lips and face and large calluses on her feet and ankles from being constantly on her hands and knees cleaning floors.

One neighbour described the woman as ‘looking like something out of a concentration camp’.

Another saw her looking ‘skin and bone’ with a shaved head and described seeing her being hit with a broom.

Since being rescued, the woman is now living with a foster family, attending college and has been on holiday abroad.

She has suffered nightmares about her ordeal and has a constant wish to clean. Wixon denied all the charges and blamed her estranged son, Clint, for suggesting things to the woman.

Edward Hollingsworth, defending, said: ‘The truth is, that just like Mandy and others in the family, their teeth rotted out by neglect, and has been inflated to a story of violent abuse. Negligent but not the systematic abuse that has been alleged.’

Told she could get a 10-year prison sentence, Wixon replied: ‘I know that. Do you think I am stupid? Do you think I don’t know that?’

Former neighbour Kiran Atwal lived next door to Wixon and her family growing up and said she ‘deserved’ a prison sentence.

‘She can rot in hell. Good luck to her in prison is all I’ve got to say,’ Ms Atwal said outside court. ‘She deserved it, and I cannot wait for sentencing day.’

‘When we were kids, we didn’t really notice, like didn’t really take it in what was going on but as we got older we sort of realised what was happening and what was going on and it’s sickening. We knew she was there in the very beginning when we were kids, but I’d say the last 10 to 15 years, we didn’t see her; she was never seen.

‘Shocking, it was horrendous to find out that she was still in there. I had a phone call to say that she had got out, and it was a bit like, ‘Well, what?’ The house was not in good condition when we were kids, so I couldn’t imagine what it would be like now.’

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