UK Mother Gets 13 Years for 25-Year Abuse of Disabled Woman

A British judge sentenced Amanda Wixon, a 56-year-old mother of 10, to 13 years in prison on Thursday for subjecting a vulnerable woman with a learning disability to more than 25 years of abuse, forced labor and false imprisonment in her squalid home in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.

Gloucester Crown Court heard that Wixon, who knew the victim through family connections, took responsibility for the woman in 1995 when she was 16 years old. The victim remained in Wixon's overcrowded and unsanitary house until March 2021, performing unpaid manual labor such as cleaning and caring for Wixon's children. Prosecutors described the home as moldy and damp, with peeling plaster, rubbish in the garden and a bedroom for the victim likened to a prison cell.

During a 13-day trial in January, Wixon was convicted of false imprisonment, two counts of requiring forced or compulsory labor and four counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. She was acquitted of one assault charge. The court learned that Wixon regularly beat the victim, now in her 40s, using a broom handle that once knocked out her teeth. Other abuses included forcing washing-up liquid down her throat, splashing bleach on her...