pounds 100,000 for nanny kept as slave

A nanny who was treated as a slave by her employers was yesterday awarded pounds 100,000 in High Court damages against the couple who fed her scraps and made her sleep outside like a dog.

Nigerian-born Helen Samuels was whipped with knotted electrical flex, beaten with high-heeled shoes and starved to a weight of six stone. Deputy Judge Nigel Wilkinson QC said she had been "treated as no human being should have been treated".

Her employers, Dr Truman Abassah and his wife Philomena, are back in Nigeria after they were deported half-way through five-year prison sentences imposed at Croydon Crown Court in 1991 for causing actual bodily harm. Ms Samuels, 30, lived with the Abassahs between 1985 and 1990 in Thamesmead, south-east London, and then in Bexleyheath.