When police raided a caravan site in Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire just before dawn in September last year to free a group of men they believed were living in servitude, officers were shocked by the filth and degradation men were living in. Rubbish littered cramped sheds with no heating or running water. Workers were hungry and ill; one man had scurvy.

On Wednesday, four members of a family were found guilty of keeping workers in a state of servitude and forcing them to perform unpaid work.

Tommy Connors Snr, 52; his son Patrick, 20; his daughter Josie, 30; and her husband James John, 34, were convicted at Luton crown court of controlling, exploiting, verbally abusing and beating the men for financial gain. They face up to 14 years in prison.

The case is the first successful conviction under new "modern dayslavery" laws since new legislation was introduced in 2010.

But it has not been without problems. The jury could not reach a decision on 35 of 58 charges, and verdicts were not reached on Tommy Snr's sons Johnny, 28, James, 24, and Tommy Jnr, 27. Some defendants were found not guilty on other counts.

During a 13-week trial, the court heard that vulnerable men – many of them homeless and addicted to alcohol or drugs – were recruited in soup kitchens and outside jobcentres and promised cash payments, food and lodging in return for work.

But once at the Irish traveller site, they were forced to work for nothing in the family block paving business for up to 19 hours a day and were routinely abused, underfed and housed in filthy sheds and horseboxes.

Twenty-three men were taken from the Greenacres caravan site at Little Billington, Leighton Buzzard last September, after a high-profile raid involving armed police, sniffer dogs and helicopter support after a worker contacted officers having fled the site.

The court heard that the men's heads were shaved when they arrived at the site and they only took a shower in a local leisure centre once a week.

They were living in unheated sheds that were "unfit for human habitation". One picture of the sheds in which the men lived showed a sheet covered in human excrement and discarded budget food wrappers littering the floor. But the men worked for up to 19 hours a day, six days a week, before having to clean their bosses' caravans and plots on the seventh day. One victim – who received about £80 during 15 years with the family – is owed an estimated £70,000, based on what he was promised as a day rate, the court heard.

The men were told to call Tommy Connors Snr "Pa", while other family members insisted on being called "Dad" or "Daddy". Workers told police they were often attacked with weapons such as broom handles, while another man was threatened with a claw hammer, the court heard.

One worker said he had been stopped by two travellers outside a shop in Wembley, north-west London and offered an £80-a-day job.

But said he was never paid. The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was put to work paving. "I didn't like it but they said I couldn't leave and said if I tried to leave … I would get murdered," he said in evidence played in court. He described being punched in the eye for not finding any work, forced into the boot of the family's car and ordered to sing How Much is That Doggie in the Window and Bob the Builder. "I was basically being mentally tortured," he added.

Prosecutor Frances Oldham QC summed up the case by saying: "Physical violence and the threat of such violence, whether spoken or unspoken, was regularly used to ensure compliance with demands for work, to stop any attempt to claim the promised wages and to instil a fear of retribution if any worker attempted to escape."

She added: "They were controlled in such a way that in many cases they could not see it. They became conditioned … the reason for their exploitation was money. They may not in the strict sense have been slaves, members of the jury, but the prosecution say this: they were not free men." Some did try to escape. One man ran from the site and swam across a canal, where a fisherman called the police, while another ran off while touting for work and hid in a shed.

Escaped victims told the police others were being held in servitude, and in July 2011 the case was handed to the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire major crime unit, which put the family and their workers under surveillance before raiding the site in September.

Of the 23 men removed from the site, some went back to the site and would not testify, but others came forward after the initial raid. In all, eight men testified in court against the Connors family.

The trial has been seen as a vital test case of new anti-slavery legislation, which made slavery, servitude and forced labour a criminal offence in April 2010, which was previously covered by a range of laws including imprisonment and assault.

Modern day slavery is a real, but largely hidden, problem in the UK according to the UK Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC), which is working with police forces in Gloucestershire and Hampshire on similar cases. The centre has seen a 35% increase between 2010-2011 in the number of victims referred to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). And of the 2,444 potential victims of human trafficking referred the NRM since 2009, nearly half were for labour exploitation/domestic servitude.

Liam Vernon of the UKHTC said the high profile case would raise awareness of this type of crime and trafficking in general. "We know that people are being taken advantage of in factories, fields, fisheries and restaurants. For many of these traffickers there is too little risk and too much benefit, and we hope this case will go a long way to make them think twice before they take advantage of vulnerable people," he said.

Romana Cacchioli from the NGO Anti-Slavery International said the convictions were an important step in the fight against ending modern day slavery.

"This case exposes this myth that slavery has been consigned to the history books. That even physically fit British men can be forced to work under coercion and without pay shows the reality of anyone's susceptibility to modern day slavery," she said.

Judge Michael Kay QC told the court he will sentence the four convicted defendants on Thursday and will decide about the charges where no verdict was reached.

Thanks Soops. 

Bloody shocking, but, no, that's not the right word, saddened, really saddened. But anyone who thinks the 'officers are shocked' line seriously needs to wake up

Exactly. I wouldn't dream of suggesting there may have been collusion to the extent that this was allowed to happen for this amount of time.

Today, 2 of them were sentenced:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...bucks-herts-18811079

Travellers James John Connors, 34, and Josie Connors, 31, were convicted of two counts each of servitude and forced labour at Luton Crown Court.

The Bedfordshire pair were jailed for 11 years and four years respectively.

Four other members of the family who lived at Greenacres caravan Park near Leighton Buzzard are to face a retrial on charges of holding men in servitude and subjecting them to forced labour.

They will be tried at Luton Crown Court in April next year.

The accused are Tommy Connors Snr, 52, and his sons Tommy Connors Jnr, 27, James Connors, 24, and Patrick Connors, 20.

Johnny Connors, 28, a son of Tommy Connors Snr, who was cleared of servitude and forced labour, has been freed.

Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.