Tom Somerset-How: I want to help after suffering years of abuse

Over four years, Tom Somerset-How was physically and psychologically abused

Abused, left without sufficient food and drink and forced to live in squalid conditions. Tom Somerset-How had been living a nightmare of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of his wife and carer for four years.

Mr Somerset-How has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and requires 24-hour care. In 2016, his wife Sarah Somerset-How hired George Webb as a live-in carer at their home in Chichester, West Sussex. But after the pair began an affair, they began to isolate Mr Somerset-How from his family for their own financial gain.

Following a trial the pair were jailed for 11 years on Friday.

In his own words, he explains the ordeal he went through and how he escaped.

I was pretty much alone every day. They would leave a sports bottle of juice and a little bit to eat.

I was literally in bed for 95% of four years.

I say 95% because there were times where they had to get me to see family, like at Christmas.

They'd get me out of bed, get me dressed and cleaned up, then as soon as the event was done, I'd be put straight back into bed and left there.

Sarah actually said at one point when we were driving back from my mum's: "Right that's my job done for the month."

I was basically under duress and threat, and Sarah said: "You do not make any phone calls unless I'm with you."

So I would use my iPad and talk to my friends online, and I talked to my friend Gina.

Sarah Somerset-How and her lover George Webb left Tom Somerset-How bedbound and malnourished in his home

Within 24 hours, I got a call from mum. Then I got a call from a social worker two days after and he said: "Do you want to leave?"

Before he even finished the sentence, I said: "Oh my God, yes."

I wasn't emotionally ready for them to literally bang down the door with everybody swarming in. But I wasn't quite sure how Webb would react as he was volatile.

I'd given the social worker a heads up. I said: "Look, if you're going to do this, you cannot leave my side during the entire process."

To his credit, the social worker did not leave my side.

I'm seeing a counsellor now. People say time's a healer. But time isn't a healer. Time just teaches you how to carry the damage better.

I need some form of closure to move through it because I will never live past it and that closure will help me carry the weight in a more manageable way.

I don't want to just live and exist. I want to help people, which is why I want to use this case, which has made legal history, to go forward and campaign for people who don't have the opportunity to get out of the situation that I was in.

There needs to be an official system that can flag up, not directly, but indirectly raise the alarm. Then social services could find a way to extract them.

Something good has to come out of all this.

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