Jail term for wife whose disabled husband lived in squalid conditions

A woman and her partner who enslaved her vulnerable disabled husband leaving him to live in squalid conditions have both been jailed for 11 years.

Sarah Somerset-How, 49, and George Webb, 40, were found guilty of holding Tom Somerset-How in slavery/servitude and three counts of ill-treatment by a care worker between 2016 and 2020 following a trial at Portsmouth Crown Court.

Webb, whose temper was described by the victim as a “nuclear bomb anger”, was also convicted of causing actual bodily harm while both defendants were found not guilty of fraud by false representation and theft.

The court was told that the pair, from Bognor Regis, West Sussex, neglected, abused and exploited 40-year-old Mr Somerset-How, who was left bed-bound and malnourished.

The trial heard that the pair’s treatment of Mr Somerset-How, who has cerebral palsy and uses an electric wheelchair, was uncovered by a friend as well as by the victim’s sister Kate Somerset-Holmes, an actress who has appeared in Silent Witness and Holby City.

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