My wife threatened me with a knife & beat me with bottles – I secretly filmed her when she accused ME of being abusive
HUNCHED on the sofa in the family playroom, Richard Spencer attempts to shield himself from his wife Sheree’s furious blows.
Sheree hurls insults at her husband for no other reason than the fact he hasn’t started dinner yet, just one outburst in a 20-year reign of abuse on the loving dad.
But what Sheree doesn’t realise is that Richard, 48, has secret footage of the mum’s abhorrent behaviour and the recordings, taken via cameras in the family home across a five-year period, are what led to Sheree’s eventual arrest.
“I dread to think what would have happened if I hadn’t had the video evidence,” Richard says.
“In the family court alone Sheree made 42 false allegations against me and tried to claim I was an abuser.
“The footage I collected means that she is the one in prison and that I am still part of my daughters’ lives.”
Throughout most of his relationship with Sheree, Richard secretly suffered from what a judge would later describe as “the worst case of controlling and coercive behaviour” she had ever seen.
During her sickening abuse, Sheree, 46, repeatedly threatened to go to police claiming her helpless husband was abusing her — and would even scream for help to trick neighbours into believing that was the case.
She was only jailed after Richard shared the nanny cam footage he had of Sheree’s shocking behaviour with a friend.
Speaking exclusively as part of Life Stories, Fabulous’ YouTube series which sees ordinary people share their extraordinary experiences, Richard says he is speaking out in the hope to encourage other victims of domestic violence to seek help.
He says: “Male victims of domestic abuse is still something which isn’t as well understood and well recognised.
“I would say to any men out there who are experiencing domestic abuse, reach out to someone.
“Don’t wait around thinking that things are going to get better, because things will probably get worse, I know that all too well.”
Richard was 23 when he met Sheree in a nightclub in Leeds, West Yorks, in 2000 and he was instantly attracted to her confident and bubbly personality.
HAPPY BEGININGS
“I’d seen her across the dance floor, and she was attractive, she looked confident and happy,” he remembers.
“We danced together and got chatting afterwards. My friends and I were really impressed because she persuaded the bar staff to serve us after last orders.”
The couple planned a date to the cinema and Richard says that things quickly progressed from there.
“I’d got a job at BT as a computer network consultant and I needed to move to Ipswich, and at the same time Sheree’s University degree was coming to an end,” he says.
“We had to make a decision about where our relationship was going to go and in the end Sheree decided to move down to Ipswich with me after being together for nine months.”
Richard says that the abuse started just a few months into their relationship.
He recalls how Sheree swung between two completely different personalities.
He explains: “Initially she was a kind and caring person but she had a dark side that would come out when she wasn’t happy, or sometimes she’d had too much to drink.
“At the beginning of the relationship she was a nice, kind and caring person for 95% of the time and then she would switch.
“The first time things got violent we’d been for a night out. On the way back she was upset about something.
“I can’t remember what it was, but by the time we got back to the flat she was quite angry.
“I remember her throwing a vase onto the floor and it breaking, and she pushed me and was being aggressive.
During the pregnancies that was probably one of our happiest times because she wasn’t drinking
Richard Spencer
“My biggest feeling was one of shock and frustration. I couldn’t understand what I could have done for her to respond in the way that she did.”
Richard explains who the following morning Sheree apologised, saying how much she loved him and insisted there wouldn’t be a repeat.
A PATTERN OF ABUSE
“That was a pattern that went on a long time,” says Richard who believed that getting married might improve things.
“I always thought she was abusive because something was missing,” he adds.
“So I proposed thinking being engaged would make her happy and then we got married thinking that would solve things.”
In 2009 the couple flew out to the Phi Phi Islands in Thailand, spending around £8,000 on the trip.
Rather than being surrounded by friends or family the couple stood alone on the beach, as Sheree insisted that as her parents weren’t able to join, Richard’s shouldn’t either.
“Sheree was insistent that we had no friends or family there,” he says.
“It was a strange situation but it was just an early sign of the coercive and controlling behavior side of the relationship.”
It ought to have been one of the happiest days of Richard’s life but Sheree’s behaviour on the day of the wedding rang alarm bells.
He recalls: “She started drinking quite early in the morning, and then by the afternoon she was quite drunk.
“Where we were was like paradise but it wasn’t a happy occasion and she was still under the influence of alcohol when we were getting married.
“When I was stood at the altar I felt so detached from what was going on, when I think back it’s like I’m watching a movie of someone else.
“At the time I felt it was something I had to go through as I had already agreed to it.
“We weren’t marrying because we were in love, it was more that it seemed the next logical thing to do.”
She told me she’d get a restraining order and I would never see my kids again
Richard Spencer
Following the wedding, the couple returned to their home in Ipswich where the abuse became worse as time passed.
“It’s difficult to say how things escalate because it happened so incrementally over time,” Richard says.
“We could go for months and months without any incidents whatsoever and we’d feel like a normal, happy couple but there could then be a period when the abuse would be constant.
“Initially she would just push and shove me, and then that would progress to slapping. It felt fairly normal as you see it so often on TV.
“In my mind it was almost normal to see ladies lashing out on men in that way, so it didn’t come up as a red flag in the way that it should have done.”
Richard admits he thought the abuse might stop if he could give Sheree what she wanted in life.
He knew she wanted a big family, so the couple began trying for a baby.
“I genuinely thought that if she had a baby she would have nothing left to be angry about and she would focus on the child, and she would be happy, and then the abuse would stop,” Richard explains.
“During the pregnancies that was probably one of our happiest times because she wasn’t drinking at all.”
TERRIFYING ASSAULTS
But for Richard, who went on to have three daughters with Sheree, the abuse spiralled.
It was over Easter in 2020 that he ended up in hospital.
“She would smash wine glasses on my head and she would bite me, which was extremely painful,” Richard says.
“During one incident during lockdown she hit me on the side of the head with a wine bottle. It caused a cauliflower ear and I had treatment to prevent the swelling.
“I needed to go to hospital, and she didn’t want me to go.
“I said I’d make up an excuse that I was playing a racquetball game, and someone had hit me on my ear. That’s what I did and nobody questioned it.”
During lockdown Richard’s injuries became so frequent he was forced to find ways to cover them up to avoid suspicion.
“I couldn’t really leave the house without the risk that people would be able to see my injuries which were often on my face,” he says.
“I’d apply makeup, so that some of them weren’t visible.
“Luckily I was working from home a lot but if I had a meeting I would use Sheree’s makeup to cover up.”
However, aside from the physical abuse, Sheree degraded Richard mentally, which he says was just as damaging.
“She would break eggs on my head or pour a 4 litre bottle of milk on the floor, so it would go under the kitchen cupboards. She’d make me clear that up and that would take a long time,” he recalls.
“She would make comments about my weight and appearance and initially I didn’t pay any attention as I had quite high self esteem but eventually they began to chip away.”
Richard says one of the most shocking incidents happened in the bedroom one day during lockdown.
HUMILIATING AND DEGRADING
“I was sat in the bedroom and Sheree had gone to the toilet,” he recalls.
“Then she came back and was hovering above me – and then she defecated on me.
“She’d made messes in a similar way before on a couple of occasions – she’d defecate on the floor and refuse to clear it up.
“We had children and I didn’t want them to witness that so I wouldn’t have any choice but to clear it up myself.”
Additionally, he racked up £45,000 in debt and Sheree would often not contribute to bills as an act of “punishment”.
“We were living beyond our means and she was well aware of that,” he says.
“That was another way of making sure I couldn’t leave.”
Over time, Richard began to recognise the warning signs and triggers for Sheree’s abuse.
He started to take steps to protect himself.
“If she started drinking I would sense that something was going to happen and I would have a routine,” he says.
“I would go around the house and hide certain things like my work laptop and my mobile phone because she would smash them up. I went through around eight phones, and four laptops.
“I’d take the car keys and put them in a safe place, so I could leave the house if things were escalating.
“Sometimes, when the children had gone to bed and I knew they were safe, it was easier just to get in the car and just drive away.
“I spent numerous nights in the car in a nearby layby.”
Meanwhile, Sheree tried to make out that she was in fact the victim.
During some of the attacks she would open the windows and shout for help, threatening to tell friends or the police that she was being abused.
“She’d claimed she’d send pictures of bruises on her wrists to her friends claiming I had inflicted them and threatened to smash the bathroom mirror and cut herself with the glass,” Richard says.
“She told me she’d get a restraining order and I would never see my kids again.
“I felt totally trapped, we were in a lot of debt so it felt like I had no escape and even if I did try to leave, Sheree would make it look like I was the abuser.”
It was in 2016 that he decided to gather his own evidence in the event that Sheree made good on her threats.
The couple had two cameras installed in the family home — one in the playroom and one in the nursery to act as a baby monitor.
After 28 days the recordings were automatically deleted to free up space for new footage.
When his eldest daughter turned one, Richard began secretly saving the footage of his abuse as “insurance”, due to the fear he would be cut off from seeing his beloved kids.
The shocking footage, spanning five years, sees Sheree verbally and physically abusing Richard, and during one incident even holding a kitchen knife to his throat.
In one video, she punches a defenceless Richard on the sofa in the playroom because he had not made dinner, barking at him: “Get in there and put the f***ing chicken in, you fat c***. Go on, you f***er. You lazy b*****d.”
But Richard never showed the five years of footage to anyone until Sheree contacted one of Richard’s friends, claiming he was drunk and she feared he might harm her in June 2021.
FINDING SUPPORT
“My friend came to the house and said he was going to speak to the both of us,” Richard says.
“He asked me how I had come to have the bruises on my face and that’s when I came clean about everything for the first time in 20 years.
“Just telling someone felt like a huge weight had been lifted.
“I sent him all of the footage and asked him to tell me if I was overreacting.
“He told me I absolutely wasn’t overreacting and he was going to do something that I wasn’t going to like but he hoped I’d eventually forgive him.”
Richard’s friend was so horrified by what he saw, he sent the recordings to the police.
In June 2021 Sheree was arrested, and Richard provided more than 43 images of bruises inflicted by his wife.
How To Get Help:
You do not have to wait for an emergency situation to find help.
It’s important to tell someone and remember you’re not alone.
The NHS website states that you can:
- Talk to a doctor, health visitor or midwife
- Men can call Men’s Advice Line on 0808 8010 327 (Monday to Friday 10am to 8pm), or visit the webchat at Men’s Advice Line (Wednesday 10am to 11.30am and 2.30pm to 4pm) for non-judgemental information and support
- Men can also call ManKind on 0182 3334 244 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm)
- Anyone can call Karma Nirvana on 0800 5999 247 (Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm) for forced marriage and honour crimes. You can also call 020 7008 0151 to speak to the GOV.UK Forced Marriage Unit
- In an emergency, call 999
In 2023, Sheree admitted coercive and controlling behaviour between January 2016 and June 2021, and three offences of assaulting Richard, causing actual bodily harm, between January and April 2020.
She was handed a four-year sentence at Hull Crown Court in March.
Judge Kate Rayfield told her that the abuse was: “The worst case of controlling and coercive behaviour I have seen.”
Richard, who is still living in East Yorkshire and is working for BT, is moving on with his life with a new partner. He says despite their ordeal, his children are thriving in a loving home.
“The fact that the abuse happened around the children and they witnessed the abuse is obviously one of the most difficult things to deal with,” he explains.
“Luckily, since Sheree was arrested and went to jail they’ve had so much support from my family and neighbours and they are happier than they’ve ever been.
Even after everything I don’t take what Sheree did to me personally
Richard Spencer
“They will have memories of what happened and that breaks my heart, but I’m so glad they are growing up in a loving home now and that part of their life is over.”
Richard, who is now an ambassador for charities Mankind, For Baby’s Sake and Dads Unlimited, wants to encourage other victims of domestic violence to seek help.
“It can seem impossible, I know in my own situation I felt totally cut off from friends and family but there is always help when you need it,” he says.
“Reach out to someone, whether it’s a friend or family, or a helpline to get that help so that you can get help you need, and start living the life you deserve.”