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Three women were rescued from a south London house after being held captive for 30 years. Police raided the home of a man and woman who reportedly held the women against their will in "horrific conditions" for three decades. The rescue happened after one of the women got a telephone and contacted Freedom Charity, which frees victims of forced marriages. Police found a 69-year-old Malaysian woman, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old Briton. Police think the British woman was born in captivity and then enslaved. She has no experience of life outside the house.

Police said: "This is the very early stages of a complicated and sensitive investigation." They said the women are "highly traumatised" after 30 years of being "held in servitude". The women had "no real exposure to the outside world". The police said it would take time to find out the whole story. A spokeswoman from the charity was amazed at how the women were kept for so long in the middle of London without anyone knowing. She said: "We often don't know our neighbours. We're looking at people who were kept against their will in an ordinary residential street in central London."