MEMBERS of a family, who enslaved two women and forced them to work as prostitutes, have been jailed for a total of 17 and a half years.

Ferenc Dardai, his wife Melania Kiraly and their two sons, Ferenc Dardai Jnr and Daniel Dardai, kept the Hungarian women at their home in Spa Road, Bolton, threatening and beating them.

Det Insp Neil Blackwood led a team of 16 dedicated officers in what was GMP’s first pro-active human trafficking operation.

After the case, he said the victims had been kept in a two-up, two-down terraced house alongside nine others including the defendants.

The occupants were sleeping on the sofa and the floor as it was so cramped.

He said: “It certainly didn’t have the trappings of the crime these people were committing.

“There was the suggestion these girls – the victims – were working extensively and also earning quite a lot of money. They saw none of that.

“One of victims lost 30 per cent of her body weight during the 18 months they were being held and indeed they weren’t allowed to use cutlery and could only eat when the offenders had eaten and could only eat if they had earned enough money that day.

“To be quite frank, they would have been treated better had they been animals.”

Mr Blackwood said his team remains committed to rooting out human trafficking with a focus on victims from Hungary in Eastern Europe.

He said: “My operation is continuing to look at human trafficking. Every day we are finding new victims.

“There’s plenty more people out there suffering this exact fate and just don’t know how to get help.

“My operation took place in Bolton, which highlights there is a problem there but it doesn’t mean it’s just reserved to that part of Greater Manchester.

“It’s prevalent across the UK. It’s an epidemic.”

Judge Peter Davies, sentencing at Bolton Crown Court, said: “Theirs was a frightening ordeal. There was no reward, there was no decency – instead they lived lives characterised by abuse."

The court had heard how one of the women, aged 30, had come to Bolton in March, 2014 to work as a prostitute in order to send cash back to her 12-year-old son.

But within months she had met the Dardai family and moved in with them.

Identity documents she had handed to unknown people in order to take part in a sham marriage were not returned and, unable to return home, the family forced her to have sex with customers four or five times a day.

She did not see a penny of her earnings and she was beaten, kept short of food and forced to clean the home when she was not having sex.

Judge Davies said: “She was stranded, isolated and unable to escape. Her existence in the house was miserable.”

The other victim, a 21-year-old woman, went to live with the family after arriving in the country in November, 2013.

But after giving birth to a child, she was coerced into earning cash through prostitution for the Dardais, who threatened to turn her and her baby out of the house.

Judge Davies said: “The control and exploitation exerted over both the victims of these crimes by the defendants changed the character of the life they expected in the UK."

While the women were mostly controlled and beaten by 22-year-old Ferenc Jnr, Judge Davies said it was “fanciful” that the others were not aware of what was happening.

He said they had participated in the trafficking to various degrees, benefiting from the cash they earned.

He said: “Their life, far away from their home country, was desperate and lonely.”

Ferenc Dardai Snr, aged 43, Kiraly, aged 42, and Ferenc Dardai Jnr pleaded guilty to two counts of sex trafficking while 19-year-old Daniel Dardai admitted a single count.

Kiraly, who sobbed throughout the sentencing, also pleaded guilty to participating in a sham marriage to a man from Pakistan in 2013.

Ferenc Dardai Jnr was jailed for six years. Kiraly will serve four and a half years and Ferenc Dardai Snr four years.

Daniel Dardai was told he will spend three years in a young offenders’ institution.