A husband and wife who "brutally manipulated and exploited" destitute men by forcing them into servitude have been jailed for 11 years and four years respectively.
James John Connors, 34, and Josie Connors, 31, who are both members of a Traveller family, were convicted of controlling, exploiting and abusing the men for financial gain at a caravan site near Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, England.
Sentencing them at Luton Crown Court, Judge Michael Kay QC said: "The way they brutally manipulated and exploited men is pure evil.
''It is at odds with the moral code of the religion they profess to hold.
"Their disdain for the dignity of others is shocking. They were not Good Samaritans but violent, cold, hard exploiters."
Yesterday, Tommy Connors Senior, James John Connors, Patrick Connors and Josie Connors were convicted of controlling, exploiting, verbally abusing and beating the men for financial gain.
During the trial, the jury heard that the complainants, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were forced to work in the Connors' block paving business.
The trial, which lasted for 13 weeks, heard that men were given next to no food, forced to wash in cold water and paid little or no money for working up to 19 hours a day, six days a week.
Living in caravans and sheds deemed unfit for human habitation, prosecutors said the men spent Sundays doing further work by way of door-to-door selling.
Many of them were alcoholics, drug addicts or had previously been in trouble with the law, and were picked up off the streets, at soup kitchens or in homeless centres.
One told police he had been warned he would be "murdered" if he ever tried to leave, the trial was told.
Another said that living at the caravan site was like being in a "concentration camp".
Most of the workers sooner or later managed to escape but remained fearful of being "recaptured", the jury heard.
The crimes came to light last year after police raided the Greenacres caravan site on 11 September.
