Domestic abuse, The story of Richard and Sheree Spenser

0:02 Hello everyone and welcome back to Unthinkable, a True Crime Podcast. My name is Lisa. Now the case I'm going to be covering today is a little bit different to the other the others I've covered. Admittedly, I've only done four episodes, but this one, this yeah, this one's different, and I feel that this is an important um story as the subject still has a lot of stigma around it. So today I'm going to talk about domestic violence against men. Now, when we think about domestic violence, we kind of automatically think that this is something that only happens to women, but it's actually a lot more common than we think.

0:41 In fact, in England and Wales, one in six men experience domestic abuse in their lifetime, and at least one man is killed every month by their partner. And that's just the ones we know about. Quite often these cases go unreported. You know, men are stronger than women, and I read on the National Centre for Domestic Violence that men struggle with not being believed, being laughed at, or minimalized. Some worry they'll be assumed to be the abuser, and if they have children, they fear that they will lose contact with the children.

1:19 And in these cases where the abuser is the woman, you know, it would only take, you know, the victim to try and restrain their attacker to stop the assault. And if they left a mark, this could easily be flipped around that the man is the aggressor. So it shouldn't be, but you can see why it's maybe a bit harder for men to speak at. Now there are different types of domestic abuse. We see things like coercive control, emotional, emotional and physical abuse, financial abuse, threats involving children, physical violence, false allegations used as a form of control, and sexual abuse.

2:01 Now, this case has it all bar the sexual abuse. So this is the story of what happened to Richard Spencer at the hands of his wife Cherie. So the couple were married for 20 years, they had three children, they lived in a big house in a nice neighborhood, they had good jobs, nice cars, and it just goes to show you really never know what's going on behind closed doors. Now there's a documentary on this, it's called My Wife, My Abuser. It's on channel 5. It's really, really good. I recommend it. Um, Richard he set up hidden cameras around the house so that he would have some proof because Cherie would threaten to tell people that he was violent to her, and she used to actually open the window and shout out, Richard, you're hurting me.

2:52 Richard, stop hitting me. She's just horrid. Um, so he set up these hidden cameras so he could catch the abuse so that you know he would be believed if and when he came forwards. Okay, so that being said, let's get started. So Richard and Cherie, they lived in East Yorkshire. Cherie had a job as a senior project manager in the HM Prison and Probation Service. Colleagues describe her as polite and professional, very determined, and she took her job, sorry, she took her job very seriously, and she was well well respected.

3:32 Though as her career progressed, people started noting that she would some kinds of sometimes appear arrogant, um, a bit of an overinflated ego. Richard worked as an IT designer, so they both had good careers. So Cherie and Richard, they live in a large, detached house. It's well maintained, inside and outside, and to the outside world, they seem to be a very happy, successful couple. They went on regular holidays. There's photos on social media show showing a normal happy couple. They met in a nightclub in the year 2000 and they went on to get married in a beautiful ceremony in Thailand in 2009.

4:18 Now, the photos of the wedding, it's just lovely. The couple look happy, they look in love, and you can see from the photos at Cherie, she's quite a lot smaller than Richard, like he's very tall, he's six foot, and Sherry is small and petite. Now, the abuse started quite early in their relationship within the first two or three years. It was subtle to begin with and infrequent, so she would shout at Richard quite aggressively, and then she sort of started beginning by pushing him and shoving him.

4:50 Um but then it began to escalate, and it went on to be severe physical, emotional, and financial abuse. And it's horrendous. So Cherie, she punched Richard, she kicked him, she slapped him, she bit him, she hit him over the head with a wine bottle so hard that it permanently disfigured his ear, so he's got cauliflower ear. And when he was telling her the next day that his ear was hurting, she began punching him in his ear, and he was screaming. He went to hospital and Cherie made him pretend that he was her brother to avoid any awkward questions.

5:34 Her brother has a drinking problem, so they were trying it to be that Richard hurt himself being drunk. This was just to avoid anybody asking anything. Uh, but she threatened him with knives. She drags him around on the floor. And Richard he likes to wear a shirt, like he likes to be smart, and he says that when he knows an attack is coming, he'll change into a popper shirt, so that when she attacks him, his shirt will pop open rather than rip. Now there are videos of Richard being dragged by Cherie and his shirt is ripped pretty much in half.

6:11 Richard is covered in bruises, scratches, scars, she spits on him.

6:22 She calls him a fat C-U-N-T, a effing little bitch. She says she hates him. She said she says if she knew what she knew about him, she would never have married him. But it's the way that she says it. So in the documentary, you hear her talking and she's quite slurry, but the way she's talking is just it's horrible. Um and Richard, so his mother died when he was nine, and Cherie, she says to him, Well, I would I would want to be dead too if I gave birth to you. And she says, I hope your sister dies of cancer and things like this.

6:59 Um, and there's a time when Richard hesitates when she asks him to go to the shop for more wine, and she gets a knife and slashes the car tyres. She's just out of control. And then that same day she threatens Richard with the knife, she pushes him over the sofa, like the arm of the sofa with the knife in her hand, calling him these names. She degrades him as a man. Oh, she's just horrendous. So when the couple be like when they were trying for their first child, they ended up going down the route of IVF because they didn't conceive in the first couple of months, and she uses this against him.

7:37 You know, he's not a man, uh, he just had to do that one thing for her. Like, oh, just horrible. She caused him useless. It's horrible. Um, in these videos, there's countless times Richard is carrowing on the sofa, and Cherie is standing over him. I mean, he's physically stronger than her, but he never ever retaliates. Like, he's just such a lovely man, and he's a lovely man. So the children, so Cherie, after a few years of being married, said to Richard, she thinks it's time they tried for a baby.

8:12 And as I said, after a couple of months of Cherie not getting pregnant, they decided I uh on IVF, and within a few weeks, Cherie was pregnant. Richard commented on how amazing she was during this time, and he was hoping that she would finally be happy and the violence would stop. But of course, that wasn't the case. The couple go on to have three children in all, and the violence Richard endures, sadly, the children witness it all. They are there when she's threatening him with a knife. They hear her saying, I treat him like a bitch because he is.

8:52 Richard's cowering on the floor at her feet. The children are there. There's so some of like some of the time they're screaming, other times they're just standing there. Oh horrible. There's also a time when they're in the car, so the three girls are in the back and Richard's driving, Cherie's in the passenger seat, and she kicks off the passenger side wing mirror, she kicks off the rear view mirror, and then she wheeze on the seat and told Richard to clean it up. So where the recordings come in, this is during an argument, and Cherise says that she'll go into the bathroom and smash the mirror with her face, and then she'll use the glass to cut her face.

9:40 Then she'll send the photos to a friend saying that Richard had done it, and then she'll get a restraining order so that he couldn't see the children. That's when she then opened the window and started shouting, Richard, you're hurting me, Richard, you're hitting me, which is something she did a lot. Now Richard says something changed in him then, and he realized he needed to do something. So he put hidden cameras around the house and he activated a voice recording app on his phone so he would have evidence of his own.

10:12 And Richard, bless him, he felt guilty for having these secret recordings, and he almost deleted them on a number of occasions. Like, thank goodness he didn't. Now, Cherie, she was an alcoholic, and she would quite often drink three bottles of wine a day. This fueled her anger and she would lash out in a in a drunken rage. And we see this with people, don't we? They can be the nicest people in the world but lash out when they're drunk. And no doubt the alcohol was a factor here, but Richard later said that Cherie could be just as volatile when sober.

10:48 Richard said Cherie had demons from her childhood, which she hadn't dealt with, which possibly led to her violence towards him. But her violence was solely aimed at Richard. She can hide it from the outside world. Um, you know, she was described as pleasant by people, so it makes you feel like she is in control of in control of it. So there was one particularly horrifying incident. So Richard he was sitting on the floor in the bedroom. Cherie had brought the bed on her credit card and she wouldn't let Richard sit on it with her because she said that she owned it.

11:28 So Richard sat on the floor and they were arguing. Um, Cherie's drunk. Cherie gets up and goes towards the bathroom, but then ends up kind of sitting on Richard's head, and he doesn't know what's going on, and then she defecates on his head. It's just it's another level, isn't it? She defecates on his head, then tells him to clean it up. She actually says keep scrubbing U C U N T. Richard, you hear him saying, I don't deserve this, Cherie. And his voice when he says it is just it's heartbreaking.

12:09 He's broken man, she's she's broken him. Now, during an argument, Cherie actually rings one of Richard's friends, Tony, and she tells him that Richard's drunk and they're arguing and they're not getting on and she doesn't know what to do. Now Tony is alarmed by this, so he comes to the house. Now, Cherie is the one who's drunk, not Richard. So Tony talks to the to them, and Cherie's doing all the talking. Um so then Tony says he wants to speak to them separately. So Cherie puts all the blame on Richard, of course she does, but Tony notices bruises on Richard's face.

12:48 So Tony says, Let's go for a walk, and he asks him what happened to his face, and Richard breaks down and tells him. Richard then sent Tony some of the videos, and Tony understandably was badly affected by these videos, and he takes action. And Richard didn't want him to, he still wants to protect Cherie, but Tony says things aren't going to get any better for you, and I've got to do what I think is right, and then he says, I hope, you know, I hope you'll forgive me. And Tony actually calls the police on Richard's behalf.

13:26 Now, in early summer 2021, Cherie is arrested. The police came to the house at just after 4 pm in the evening. Cherie is drunk. Poor Richard just lets out a huge sigh of relief when the police officers arrive. One of them actually said that Richard's eyes were sunken. And for a man that's six foot tall, he looked four foot tall where he was so deflated. Cherie, she's taken down to the station. Um, the police come back to talk to Richard, and he starts telling them the harrowing details of what he's been going through for the last 20 years.

14:06 And one of the officers, Adele, she's visibly upset by what she's hearing. It's just really sad. Um, so now back at the station, Cherie is being interviewed, and she, of course, is saying Richard is the violent one. They are showing her injury photos. There are 43 photos. Um, they're showing her these these injury photos, and she denies them, of course. Um, there's one where she's looking at a photo of the bite marks, and she says that they were caused when she was trying to get him off her. Um, and remember what I said about Richard's ear being damaged when she hit him with the wine bottle.

14:47 Well, she denied this as well, and she said that this was caused by Richard being drunk and falling into a table. Now this goes on and on. The foot there's uh photos where she's just denying she's you know, she doesn't know what they are, where they've come from. There's some she's saying she knows how they happened, but it's all in self-defense. Um, and you know, the the police know because they've seen the videos, you know. But anyway, she continues and then they decide to show her one of the videos.

15:19 Now they show her the one when she's attacking him with a knife. The first time they play um the video, it's actually played by accident without the sound, so it's just like a visual, and you see Cherie with the knife, and she goes up to Richard, and yeah, I mean she pushes him over the sofa, all that sort of thing. Um, so what she says is happening here is that Richard has been threatening to kill her. So she says that he's saying that he'd rather kill her than divorce her, and um, so she says she got so fed up with hearing this that she snapped and she's trying to give him the knife.

15:55 So she's saying with the pushing, she's saying that she's trying to hand him the knife to like for for you know for him to use to kill her. But then they play the audio again, sorry, they play the video again with the audio, and it's damning, there's nothing she can do. Um, and you see her sort of staring at the screen, and she doesn't really show any emotion, but you can see that she's like, Oh no, and she says, All I can say is that this, you know, he's been abusive to me, and I'm reacting. But you know, they know.

16:34 So in March 2023, Cherie is charged with uh coercive and controlling behaviour, three counts of assault, um, occasioning in actual bodily harm. Now, uh Judge Kate uh Rayfield said it was the worst case of controlling and coercive behaviour she'd ever seen. And Cherie was sentenced to four years in prison, and she had an indefinite restraining order, which prevents her from contacting Richard and once she's released. She's due to be released in 2027. Um, and right up until the day of the trial, Cherie was still claiming that she was the victim.

17:20 Um, she was still trying to convince everybody that Richard was the aggressor, um, up until the very last day, and then she turned around and pledged guilty. Um, and when she was being sentenced, it's been reported that she was smirking. So, and I think this is just one final thing that she can do towards Richard, like she's not showing any remorse whatsoever. She's smirking, you know, and this is oh, I don't know. It's just awful. But yeah, so she's found guilty, she's sentenced to four years in prison.

17:58 Um, so then Richard, he he says he's the relief knowing that she was not coming back, you know, is that's what he needed, you know, and um so now he's trying to re rebuild his life. Um, he does a lot of work with um domestic abuse charities now as well. Um, and there you have it. This is the awful case. It's definitely a case that I think needs highlighting. Like Richard's story is one of resilience, and it's a testament to Richard and the strength it takes to go through survive and speak out about the abuse that he suffered.

18:38 Um, and I do really encourage you to watch the documentary My Wife, My Abuser. It's really, it's really good and it's very thought-provoking. Um, and it's really like has expanded the conversations on domestic abuse, and there's been discussions about there needs to be uh more resources for male victims, um, because we have there's lots of women's refuges, as there should be, of course. Um, but I feel like there's more for women with um domestic violence than there is for men, and I think sometimes men just don't know what to do.

19:14 And if you think about like in the sort of same-sex relationships as well, if there's two men and one of them is the aggressor, so it yeah, it's sort of opening up the conversations to get more resources out there so that so that they they know where to go. And I think you know, with men it's quite difficult for them to say that they're being hurt by a girl because of just how it sounds, you know. But like if you look at Richard, like he's the loveliest man, like he did everything he could to make Cherie happy.

19:46 Um but it was never enough, and because because it was she she used to say that he was a robot because she he would never get upset with her, and it's almost like she's she wants him to, she wants him to get to get angry with her, you know, and and he didn't, and it almost spurred her on, you know. She was just terrible to him, but you know, you sort of see in in this documentary, she's so angry, and she's she's a horror, she shouts right in his face, shouting at him, you know, pushing him, shoving him, and he's there's so many videos of him just carrying, and you know, and he could, he could have fought back, but you know, he didn't, and it just shows the sort of man he is.

20:31 Um, so yeah, so we hope he's re rebuilding his life, and he's not too traumatized by this, but he's gonna have be scarred forever, isn't he? Bless him. Um, yeah, so well, that's it for today. So thanks for listening, everybody. Let me know what you think of this episode, and I like to end by saying in a world where you can be anything, be kind. Take care.