Women allegedly held as slaves for 30 years in south London originally met their captors in a “collective” after meeting them through a “shared political ideology”, police have disclosed. 
 
 Commander Steve Rodhouse, of Scotland Yard, also revealed the couple accused of holding the three women against their will were of Indian and Tanzanian origin, and came to live in Britain in the 1960s. 
 
 The address where the women lived with their alleged captors has been revealed as a tidy three-storey council block in Peckford Place, Stockwell, south London. 
 
 One neighbour said the elderly couple who lived at the address appeared to be "dominant" over the other occupants. 
 
 It emerged earlier this week that the three victims - a 69 year-old Malaysian, a 57 year-old Irish woman and a British woman aged 30 - were rescued from the property last month and had been subjected to what police described as “emotional control” for decades. 
 
 Neighbours expressed their shock and surprise at the drama which had unfolded in recent days at the flat on the Angel Town estate. 
 
 One man said he had seen a woman in her 30s, who appeared to be of Indian origin, entering the house on two occasions in recent months. 
 
 "She looked completely normal. She was wearing a headscarf and just went into the flat on the times I saw her," said Jose Pereira, 54, a cook. 
 
 One resident, who did not want to be named, described the occupants as an elderly Indian couple, a woman in her 30s and another woman of Indian appearance in her mid-50s. 
 
 He said: "I thought the elderly couple were looking after the others, as if they were carers, but there was something strange about it all. 
 
 "The older couple were definitely the ones in charge, they were the dominant ones, you could tell that. 
 
 "The young girl was very quiet and would not say very much. She was very pretty. I have to say the older couple were very polite." 
 
 Another resident, who would only give her name as Sophie, described how she spotted one of the women being pushed in a wheelchair by another of the occupants of the house three weeks ago. 
 
 Mr Rodhouse said officers were beginning house-to-house inquiries nearby in a bid to learn more about the extraordinary incident. 
 
 Mr Rodhouse said: “The suspects are of Indian and Tanzanian origin that came to the UK in the 1960s. 
 
 “We believe that two of the victims met the male suspect in London through a shared political ideology, and that they lived together at an address that you could effectively call a ‘collective’. 
 
 “Somehow that collective came to an end and how the women ended up continuing to live with the suspects. 
 
 “How this resulted in the women living in this way for over 30 years is what are seeking to establish, but we believe emotional and physical abuse has been a feature of all the victims’ lives. 
 
 “The people involved, the nature of that collective and how it operated is all subject to our investigation and we are slowly and painstakingly piecing together more information. I will not give any further information about it.” 
 
 Mr Rodhouse revealed the younger of the three victims had a birth certificate but added: “That is all the official documentation we can find.” 
 
 Officers believe the 30 year-old woman has lived with the suspects and the other victims all her life. 
 
 The rescue was staged after the 57 year-old woman secretly gained access to a telephone and contacted Freedom Charity, which works with victims of enforced labour. 
 
 She first contacted them on 18 October and following negotiations over a week, the three women left the property on October 25 when the occupants of the house were out. 
 
 They were moved to a safe location where they have been receiving specialist help. It is not yet known if they are related. 
 
 On Thursday the alleged captors, both aged 67, were arrested and questioned but have since been released on bail until January. 
 
 Mr Rodhouse said no-one had reported the three victims missing to police between they day they left the house and the day of the arrests. 
 
 He added: “I understand the huge public interest in this case, the desire for information and the shock that it has caused. 
 
 “However, we must take every step to protect the identities of the victims who are understandably emotionally fragile and highly vulnerable. 
 
 “For that reason will not provide any information that will lead to the identification of the suspects or these women that require our every effort to protect them.” 
 
 A Aneeta Prem of Freedom Charity 
 
 Earlier, police said the women had been "brainwashed" because of the fear instilled in them by their captors, and were held by "invisible handcuffs". 
 
 At the Angel Town estate Sara Habtemichael, 41, a mother-of-three, said: "It's so very sad what seems to have happened there. 
 
 "Can you imagine what was going on? I've lived here for five years and never really noticed the people who lived at that address. 
 
 "When I first heard about it on th news I coudl never have imagined it would be opposite where I live. it's just awful." 
 
 Another resident, Peter Nosike, 37, said: "It seems almost impossible that something like this could happen here. It's just shocking. 
 
 "I know most of the people who live on this block but I've never noticed the people who lived there, which is strange because it's quite open on the estate and we all overlook each other." 
 
 Aneeta Prem, founder of the Freedom Charity, said: “We have seen an extraordinary rise in calls to our helpline since the rescue of the three women came into the public domain. 
 
 “We received five times as many calls in 24 hours as we normally do in one week and are needing to increase our resources to cope with this extra demand. 
 
 “These women have had traumatic and disturbing experiences, which they have revealed to us. 
 
 “What needs to happen now is that the three victims, who have begun a long process of recovery, are able to go through their rehabilitation undisturbed, without being identified.” ||||| Police are examining whether three women who were held in a south London house under what detectives described as extreme emotional control for 30 years were part of a cult which operated through beatings and brainwashing to bind them to their captors. 
 
 The complex relationship between the women and the couple who are suspected of exerting such influence over them that in three decades they never tried to leave, is at the centre of what senior officers indicated on Friday was going to be a lengthy inquiry. 
 
 Officers are also investigating whether the youngest woman, who is aged 30 and thought to have been born inside the house, was the daughter of the 57-year-old Irish woman who eventually reached out for help last month in a phone call to a charity she had seen on the news. 
 
 The Guardian understands the 30-year-old's father is allegedly the 67-year-old man who was arrested with his partner, also 67, on suspicion of domestic servitude, false imprisonment and offences against the person. On Friday, both were released on police bail after questioning. 
 
 According to those close to the case, the 30-year-old's birth was registered with the authorities and as such should have sparked visits from health visitors and midwives, but it is not known whether that happened. She never went to school, but is able to read and write, and has been described as intelligent. 
 
 Two sources close to the case indicated that the three women were held in the house through a relationship of control which was akin to a semi-religious cult. The third woman freed was a 69-year-old from Malaysia. 
 
 The police revealed on Friday that the details emerging were unlike any domestic servitude or forced labour case they had investigated before. The women were able to leave at certain times, but always in a controlled and chaperoned situation. 
 
 Commander Steve Rodhouse, of the Metropolitan police, said: "We do not believe that this case falls into the category of sexual exploitation, or what we all understand as human trafficking. 
 
 "It is not as brutally obvious as women being physically restrained inside an address and not allowed to leave. We are trying to understand what were the invisible handcuffs that were used to exert such a degree of control over these women … What we have uncovered so far is a complicated and disturbing picture of emotional control over many years, brainwashing would be the simplest term." 
 
 His colleague DI Kevin Hyland said the women suffered beatings in the house. 
 
 Aneeta Prem, founder of the Freedom Charity, which helped rescue the women, said they lived in basic conditions. "Their movements were controlled while they were in the house. They had to perform various duties within the house and they weren't given options not to do those things." 
 
 Rodhouse also revealed that the suspects – who are being investigated by the UK Border Agency over their immigration status – were arrested by the Metropolitan police four decades ago and may have been in touch with other public services over the years. He said: "To the outside world, they may have appeared to be a normal family. This does mean that over the course of many decades the people at the heart of this investigation and their victims will probably have come into contact with public services, including our own." He added that the two suspects "were arrested by the Metropolitan police in the 1970s". The women were being looked after by the Freedom Charity – which helped to rescue them after the Irish woman made a call for help on 18 October after seeing the founder on the television news. On 25 October, they walked to freedom at a pre-arranged time. 
 
 Prem said the organisation had received calls from other people saying they were being held. "This has to be a story of hope. A number of calls are coming through from people who have seen the media coverage and want to tell us they are in the same situation," she said. One report suggested that it was the failure to call for medical help when the oldest woman suffered a stroke that led to the call to the charity. 
 
 Hyland, who is leading the investigation, said the very process of the women explaining what had happened over such a long period of time was traumatising in itself. He added that the whole of his team of 37 officers were working on the case and removed 55 bags of evidence amounting to more than 2,500 exhibits from the property in south London. Prem, who has met the women several times, said that the couple suspected of holding them were like any other couple and were not extraordinary. As such she believes the neighbours didn't know. "If you'd been in a village maybe this wouldn't have happened because people would have noticed something, but I think in the centre of London you don't notice." 
 
 The women are understood to be concerned that the suspects have been released without charge on police bail. But Rodhouse said the investigation would take "some considerable time". He said: "We are unpicking a story that spans at least 30 years of these women's lives, and all of this requires police activity to turn that into evidence. While that process continues we have released the suspects on bail, but they have not returned to the property." 
 
 A CPS spokesperson said: "We have provided the Metropolitan Police Service with some very early investigative advice on this matter. We have not been asked to consider any evidence or to give charging advice at this stage."
– This much is clear about the case of three women alleged to have been kept against their will in a London home for more than 30 years: It's going to take a while to fully unwind what happened. But the picture emerging suggests that the women were controlled by their captor couple through brainwashings and beatings in conditions akin to a cult. Police today said the two 67-year-old suspects charged in the case are natives of India and Tanzania who came to Britain in the 1960s, reports AP. At some point after that, the male suspect met two of the three victims "through a shared political ideology and ... they lived together at an address that you could effectively call 'a collective,'" says police official Steve Rodhouse. “How this resulted in the women living in this way for over 30 years is what we are seeking to establish, but we believe emotional and physical abuse has been a feature of all the victims’ lives," he says, as per the Telegraph. He said the women had some degree of freedom but were bound by what he called "invisible handcuffs." The victims, now being helped by a charity, are a 69-year-old Malaysian, a 57-year-old Irish woman, and a 30-year-old Briton. Police are investigating whether the male suspect fathered the 30-year-old with the Irish woman, reports the Guardian. Her birth was registered, making it unclear how her existence went unnoticed all this time by government agencies. She can reportedly read and write and is described as intelligent, though she apparently never went to school, says the newspaper. Police say they're working to gain the trust of the victims, but it will take time. "This must move at their pace, not anyone else's," says Rodhouse.