Woman guilty of keeping slave for 25 years in Tewkesbury

A woman has been found guilty of keeping another woman with learning difficulties captive for 25 years and using her as a slave.

Mother-of-10 Mandy Wixon made the vulnerable woman clean her squalid home in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, and forced her to live off scraps.

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

At Gloucester Crown Court, Judge Ian Lawrie said there was a “Dickensian quality” to the case as Wixon was found guilty of false imprisonment, requiring a person to perform forced or compulsory labour, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

The BBC has only now been able to report details of the case due to reporting restrictions.

The court heard that the woman – who the BBC is calling K – was born into a troubled family and, when she was about 16 in 1996, was given to Wixon, who had a loose connection to her family.

Now in her 40s, K was found by police on 15 March 2021 after one of Wixon’s sons raised concerns for her welfare.

The court heard K was regularly beaten and also hit with a broom handle, knocking out her teeth.

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

Officers described K’s bedroom as looking like a “prison cell”, with other bedrooms also untidy and dirty.

She 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.”

Det Sgt Alex Pockett said: “When the police arrived, the victim had her head held down, it was clear she was extremely scared.

“She had short hair, she looked extremely malnourished, she was in scruffy clothes,” Pockett added.

Sam Jones, prosecuting, told the jury: “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.”

Since being rescued, K is now living with a foster family, attending college and has been on holidays abroad.

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