Woman `slave' wins pounds 78,000 damages

A YOUNG woman who fell three floors trying to escape from a London flat where she was kept as a domestic slave by a wealthy Kuwaiti family has been awarded pounds 77,988 damages.

Mr Justice Morland, at the High Court in London on Thursday, said Sunrethra Jayasekera, 33, was treated in a "humiliating and quite disgraceful manner" by Jaafar and Khaleed al-Sayegh. "I've heard a storywhich would seem almost incredible to have occurred in London in the Nineties... She was treated as a domestic slave," he said.

Mrs Jayasekera's dawn escape in 1991 from a ninth-floor flat came after 37 days of working without time off, any pay, or a chance to go out. She was fed on leftovers, made to sleep on the floor, repeatedly kicked and threatened with hanging.

Mrs Jayasekera, who came from Sri Lanka for a supervisor's job with Mr Sayegh, severely damaged her ankle in the fall. She also suffers post-traumatic stress disorder.