A MAN forced to work as a "serf" for a traveller family stayed with them for 18 years because he had nowhere else to go, a court heard yesterday.
Alexander Gourlay, 54, said that, had he stopped working for the Connors family, he would have ended up sleeping on a park bench or staying at a homeless shelter.
He told Bristol Crown Court that he had been picked up from a shelter in the city and worked long hours for the family, resurfacing drives or laying paving slabs, for as little as £10 a day.
William Connors, 52, wife Mary, 48, their sons John, 29, and James, 20, and their son-in-law Miles Connors, 23, deny charges of conspiracy to hold another person in servitude and conspiracy to require a person to carry out forced or compulsory labour.
The Connors are accused of treating vulnerable men – often homeless drifters or addicts – as cheap labour, keeping them in filthy caravans or sheds and dishing out regular beatings.
They were arrested after police raided traveller sites, including one in Pleasley, near Mansfield, last year. Officers also raided sites in Leicestershire and Gloucestershire.
During a second day of video-link evidence, Mr Gourlay said William Connors, known as Billy, would have gone to find him if he had left, so he "stuck it out".
"I wanted to leave but I had no place to stay," he said.
On Thursday, Mr Gourlay told the court that he was forced to live in caravans in Leicestershire or packed into sheds with other men. He said he was attacked if he did anything wrong and witnessed other members of the "serf" workforce being assaulted by the "bosses".
But yesterday he said that at times he felt like one of the Connors' family, having been given a birthday cake on one occasion and bought a TV by William Connors.