Gypsies 'sold slave' for new caravan

A VICTIM of Britain’s Gypsy slave trade last night told how he was sold from one clan to another for a caravan.

Darren Weatherill believed the family had taken him in to help him out, until they flogged him in a “business deal”.


His violent new “owners” forced him into a benefit scam and beat him so hard they knocked him out.


Darren was a teenager when he joined the first family of Irish Travellers after fleeing a secure unit for problem kids.


They changed his name and forced him to work 16-hour shifts laying Tarmac for just a fiver a day.


Then one day he was handed to a rival family. “I was told: ‘You’ll stay with them from now on,’” he said. “Then they drove off with a caravan. I never saw them again.


“It was a business deal and I had been swapped for a caravan. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was earning a few quid for a day’s work from people who wanted to help me out. But really I was just a product like a piece of meat.’’


Darren’s new “owners” made him share a camper van with other “slaves”, a lag on the run and a missing psychiatric patient.


After Darren jokingly called one of the family’s sons a “little bastard”, the dad knocked him out.


He finally fled when they tried to get him to claim their benefits for them. Darren collected the £30 and spent it on train tickets back to his mum, who had reported him missing from their home in Ormskirk, Lancs.


“When I said I had been ‘away with the Gypsies’ the police laughed,’’ he said. “The bobby didn’t seem bothered.’’


Darren, now 43, came forward after police revealed hundreds of Brits are being trafficked abroad by Mafia-style Traveller gangs in a slavery scam.


At least seven 40-strong gypsy families have used violence and intimidation to force “vulnerable” men to work on roads and driveways across Europe.


The UK Human Trafficking Centre and the Association Of Chief Police Officers is probing 213 cases in the past four years.


Last year police raided seven Travellers’ sites in six counties, including Green Acres near Leighton Buzzard, suspected of involvement in the slave trade.


Darren stormed: “If the police had taken a bit more notice of what I was telling them all those years ago this may not be happening.


“Now it’s grown into an organised operation. Stopping it will be like trying to bust the Mafia.’’