A white former restaurant manager in South Carolina was sentenced this week to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $273,000 to a black cook with an intellectual disability after pleading guilty to abusing him and forcing him to work without pay, according to the Justice Department.

The former manager, Bobby Paul Edwards, 54, had run J&J Cafeteria, a buffet restaurant in Conway, S.C., near Myrtle Beach. While working there, he forced the cook, John Christopher Smith, to work more than 100 hours a week and beat him with a belt, his fists and pots and pans, the Justice Department said.

In one instance, Mr. Edwards dipped metal tongs into hot grease and burned Mr. Smith’s neck, demeaning him using abusive language and racial slurs, according to prosecutors.

Mr. Smith, who is about 40, was removed in 2014 from J&J Cafeteria after a resident notified the authorities of the abuse.

“It is almost inconceivable that instances of forced labor endure in this country to this day, a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband of the Civil Rights Division. He added that the department would continue to investigate and prosecute human traffickers involved in forced labor.

Mr. Smith said in a statement that was read at the sentencing hearing, “Today, I feel free — out of the prison Bobby had me in.”

He added that he had hoped to open a restaurant one day. “It would be a place where all people of every kind would be welcome,” Mr. Smith’s statement said. “My workers would be nice and greet everyone with kindness. It would be a bright and happy place for everyone.”

The abuse against Mr. Smith took place from 2009 to 2014, and often occurred when he made a mistake or did not work as quickly as Mr. Edwards expected, prosecutors said.

In 2015, Mr. Smith told WMBF, an NBC affiliate in Myrtle Beach, that Mr. Edwards would beat him with belts “and all that.”

Mr. Smith said that he had worked at the restaurant since he was a young teenager, cooking, washing dishes, busing tables and doing other tasks, and that he had liked the job before the abuse started. He said he did not discuss the abuse because he was scared.

“I want him to go to prison,” Mr. Smith told WMBF. “And I want to be there when he go.”

Efforts on Friday to reach Mr. Smith or a lawyer for him were unsuccessful.

Mr. Edwards was indicted by a federal grand jury in South Carolina in 2016 and was arrested. On June 4, 2018, he pleaded guilty to one count of forced labor. Mr. Edwards’s lawyer could not be reached for comment on Friday.

“Mr. Edwards has earned every day of his sentence,” Sherri A. Lydon, the United States attorney for the District of South Carolina, said in a statement. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office will not tolerate forced or exploitative labor in South Carolina, and we are grateful to the watchful citizen and our partners in law enforcement who put a stop to this particularly cruel violence.”

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