‘I eat crumbs from the table and am paid in cigarettes’: The horror of being beaten and starved as domestic slave for a decade

Marish looks haggard, her face deeply wrinkled and one of her wrists wrapped in a grubby bandage.

The reason that this mum looks far older than her 53 years is because, shockingly, she’s been kept as a slave for the past 10 years.

Marish has been doing backbreaking domestic work seven days a week for a family who keep her enslaved.

She is allowed to eat crumbs of food swept from the family’s table after they have enjoyed a hearty meal, which she has cooked and served up.

She even tells them to “enjoy their food” before waiting outside, starving, until she must clear the plates away and eat the scraps.

Now, her harrowing story is told in a new documentary, A Woman Captured, which follows 18 months of her life as a domestic slave in Hungary.

Horrifyingly, Marish’s story is far from unique.

It’s estimated that 40 million people worldwide are enslaved. Slavery comes in many forms, including forced labour, sex trafficking, child marriage and being born into slavery that is passed down through generations.

Domestic slavery, which Marish experiences, takes place in private homes where people are forced to work for little or no pay, doing domestic chores like cooking, cleaning, laundry and childcare.

It happens all over the world, and in Hungary, where Marish lives, there is no effective law to prevent domestic slavery.

Marish sleeps on a worn sofa, barely managing to get a couple of hours rest between the relentless chores and 12-hour shifts at a factory. All her factory earnings are taken away by the family who have enslaved her.

“I don’t get any money,” she says. “Ever.”

The documentary was originally meant to be a five minute film, shot over a few days, but those days quickly turned into months after Bernadett Tuza-Ritter uncovered a horrifying reality.

Domestic slaves are often stopped from leaving the house, contact with their families is limited by their employer and their documents are confiscated. They live in fear, due to threats or physical violence.

Viewers learn that all of these abuses are suffered by Marish over the course of the documentary.

‘I’ll break your skull, bitch’

Marish tells director Bernadett Tuzza-Ritter, “If Eta asks, tell her I never spoke to you. I just answered your questions. You’re not supposed to know anything”.

Eta is the family matriarch and she is keeping Marish in slavery.

She beats and verbally abuses her, calling her an “old hag”, starves her and has taken away her identifying documents.

Eta can be heard shouting, “I’ll break your skull, bitch” and telling Marish, ‘‘What a miserable woman you are. You’re not worth anything.”

Eta keeps three servants so she doesn’t have to work herself and they are kept in similar conditions to Marish.

She is so proud to have servants that she allows Tuzza Ritter to film in her home, for a fee.

She is filmed lounging, flicking cigarette ash with her feet up, while her slaves do everything from feeding her children to making her bed every morning.

She says, “I give them cigarettes” as though this makes up for the beatings and domestic drudgery. Cigarettes are Marish’s only payment.

Eta is the only member of the family interviewed, but her children can be heard in the background of shots, laughing about how they will blame Marish for breaking crockery.

Eta and her family’s faces are never shown.

‘There’s nobody to help me’

Marish’s daughter Vivi ran away at 16 due to Eta’s cruelty. She was forced to provide childcare and stopped from leaving the house, going to school or having any friends.

Marish is so terrified for the safety of her family that she says her older children don’t know where she is because she doesn’t want to put them in ‘jeopardy’.

The reason for how Marish ended up working for Eta isn’t clear but she says that it’s impossible to escape.

“There’s no place to go and nobody to help me,” she tells Tuzza-Ritter.

When asked whether she has eaten that day, Marish says, “No and I won’t.”

She isn’t allowed to leave the house without permission and the last time she dared go to the grocery store to buy food without asking, she was beaten as soon as she got back.

Trapped in debt

All Marish wants is an apartment for herself and her daughter, but Eta has forced her to sign for Hungarian loans on behalf of the family, trapping her in debt to them.

The documentary highlights in painful detail how Marish is financially, physically and psychologically controlled by her captors.

She says that the Hungarian police won’t help her and don’t offer protection to victims of slavery.

When Tuzza-Ritter called the police about Marish’s situation anonymously, they told her “they were aware of the phenomenon, but there was nothing they could do about it.”

Marish tries to turn to the National Crisis Telephone Service for help, but they frustratingly tell her they “only support victims of domestic violence” and say they could only help her if she’d been abused by her own family.

A message of hope

Despite its harrowing subject matter, the documentary ends with a message of hope.

The influence of Tuzza-Ritter makes subtle changes to Marish’s outlook throughout filming.

Marish says to the filmmaker, “I swear, you’re the only one I trust. No one else.”

When Eta physically assaults her again, Marish decides that enough is enough.

She whispers to the camera, “I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to run away from here on Tuesday. She hit me again. This afternoon.”

In the dead of night, Marish sneaks out of the front door and doesn’t look back. She is later reunited with her daughter.

Even after suffering such terrible abuses, Marish retains her sense of compassion.

“Everyone deserves respect, even those who have lost everything,” she says. “They shouldn’t be hurt, they should be helped.”

Storyville: A Woman Captured is on BBC4 tonight at 10pm.