A 30-YEAR-old Irish traveller, who is due to give birth within days, will be tried for charges of keeping two men in servitude and requiring them to perform forced labour alongside her husband and brothers.
Mrs Josie Connors appeared before Luton Magistrates’ Court yesterday charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit offences of holding people in servitude and two counts of requiring people to perform forced labour.
She was granted bail by District Justice Nicholas Leigh Smith on condition that she stays at night at one of three mobile homes on a travellers’ campsite outside Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, which was raided by police on September 11th.
The district justice ruled that Mrs Connors could only leave the Greenacres caravan site at night to give birth at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury
She is also forbidden to contact two witnesses, either directly or indirectly and it is stipulated that she can live only with family members.
Warning her repeatedly to obey the bail conditions to the letter, District Justice Leigh-Smith told her that the Crown Court “has very considerable powers” to hold people in custody for breaches: “And it could be many months before this case comes to trial,” he declared.
Last week, Mrs Connors’s husband, James, and brothers Jimmy, Tommy and Patrick Connors were charged with conspiracy to keep four men in servitude and requiring them to perform forced labour laying tarmac and working on construction sites.
On Wednesday, another of Mrs Connors’s brothers, Johnny, was remanded in custody, charged with one count of conspiracy to hold someone in servitude and one count of conspiracy to require someone to perform forced labour.
A 51-year-old man has been released on police bail pending medical treatment and a 61-year-old woman who was arrested on Wednesday has been released on bail before further questioning by police in Luton on October 31st.
Twenty-four men were taken away by police after the September 11th raid on the Leighton Buzzard campsite after they were found living in poor conditions.
Nine of those 24, however, are known to have refused to co-operate with the police investigation.