IN one of the first cases of its kind under the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act, a husband and wife have admitted keeping a Nigerian woman as their ‘domestic slave’.
The couple, Nigerian-born Osarobo Izekor (36) and his 28-year old wife Precious Izekor pleaded guilty to requiring a person to perform forced labour in their then east Belfast home over a nine-month period.
They were due to stand trial at Belfast Crown Court on Tuesday but in an earlier closed hearing into the case defence lawyers asked for them to be re-arraigned on the single charge.
Having pleaded guilty the couple – now with separate addresses in Lisburn, Osarobo Izekor in Ashmount Gardens, and his wife in Donard Drive – were released on continuing bail to return to the court in May for sentence.
No details surrounding the case was given during the hearing but earlier proceedings indicated it involved a 32-year-old woman said to have a learning age of a four-year-old, who’d been forced to live and work in the couple’s then Castlereagh Place home between December 2016 and October the following year.
