St Albans slaver is jailed

A traveller who kept a homeless man as a “slave” was jailed for four years today.

Johnny Moloney had picked troubled alcoholic Cameron Bigger off the streets of London with the promise of a flat, regular work and food.

Instead Scotsman Mr Bigger found himself living in a cold shed back at the travellers’ site with no running water and a bucket for a toilet.

During a week long trial at St Albans Crown Court the jury was told Mr Biggar, who is now 43 years old, had been forced to carry out unpaid back breaking block paving and building work for Moloney, who is unable to read or write

Sometimes he would have to work a 14 hour day, seven days a week.

He was forced to live in a camper van, as well as in sheds at Moloney’s home in St Albans, Herts.

The jury heard he was taken to work in Ireland, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Norway and Sweden by Moloney, a married man with three young children.

Today Judge Andrew Bright QC told 30 year old Moloney the offences he had been found guilty of earlier this week “ represented the deliberate degrading of a fellow human being over a substantial period of time.”

The judge went on “You forbade him from having any contact with friends and family.”

Moloney pleaded not guilty to knowingly holding a person in slavery or servitude and knowingly requiring another person to perform forced labour.

The two charges covered a period between April 2010 and December 2014.

The jury found him guilty of both offences he faced and today he was sentenced to four years imprisonment.