Man reveals how he wore make-up to hide his bruises as abuse 'became the norm' ... trends now

When Sheree Spencer, the mother of three little girls and a senior manager at the Ministry of Justice, was facing sentence for 'the worst case of controlling and coercive behaviour' the judge in question had ever seen, her abused husband Richard could only 'focus on a spot on a piece of furniture and stare at it to get through it'.

'I felt absolutely nothing the few times I glanced across at Sheree,' says Richard. 'I didn't feel anger. I didn't feel scared. I didn't have any emotion,' he says, in this harrowing interview. 

'But I was hyper-conscious of how my family was reacting when the judge described the horrific things she'd done.

'To hear the judge use the same language Sheree used — the f-word and the c-word — the things she called me like 'bitch' and knowing my family were hearing those things was . . .' He struggles to find the words. There aren't any.

'When I think about those memories, I don't feel associated to them. It's like they happened to someone else. I know it was me but, in my mind, I can't understand how I could have allowed that to happen.'

This is the first time Richard has relived his 20-year ordeal at the hands of his wife. 

It's hard to comprehend how anyone could have tolerated two decades of such living hell, during which he was subjected to daily beatings and verbal attacks that left him cowering on the floor in the foetal position.

Few could have imagined to look at Sheree, a senior project manager for HM Prison and Probation Service who boasted to friends of meetings with former prime minister Boris Johnson, that this bewitchingly pretty blonde was capable of such despicable abuse.

Last week, she was sentenced to four years in prison at Hull Crown Court after pleading guilty to coercive and controlling behaviour and three counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Her campaign of violence and intimidation is almost too shocking to catalogue. She spat in his face. Hit him with whatever she had to hand — a bottle, a mobile phone, a TV remote control. 

I wore make-up to hide bruises. Abuse became the norm 

On one occasion, she defecated on the floor, then forced him to clear it up. On another, she beat him with a wine bottle so hard it permanently disfigured his ear.

Richard, 46, has shared with me some of the videos of abuse which were captured on a security camera in the children's playroom. Sheree's uncontrolled fury is the most terrifying I have ever witnessed.

She threatens him with a knife, drags him to the floor, kicks him, punches him. 'Get the f***ing chicken on! Get to the f***ing shop,' she screams. 'You will learn.' He cowers. Pleads with her to stop.

When officers from Humberside police interviewed Richard at the family's seven-bedroom home in a leafy village near York following Sheree's arrest in June 2021, the investigating officer was so disturbed by what she heard she had to leave the room.

'She was crying,' Richard recalls. He weeps himself now.

'When the things that have happened to me upset someone else I feel guilty,' he explains. 'I just feel that no normal person would have let that happen.'

Richard is actually a thoroughly decent, intelligent man with the sort of logical brain that gained him a degree in computing at Leeds Metropolitan University and a position at BT in network design that soon saw him addressing global conferences as an expert in his field.

Yet at home he was made to feel worthless. As difficult as he finds talking about it now, he is determined to speak out to 'help as many other people in a similar situation as I can,' he says.

'I want as many people to read about my thoughts and feelings and think, 'That sounds like me or that sounds like my partner' because this was so incremental.'

Looking back to the start of their relationship, it is a miracle Richard can recall any fondness at all. 

'For the first couple of years it was 95 per cent nice times and 5 per cent not nice times,' he says. 'It evolved. By the time she was punching me so I was having to wear make-up to hide the bruises, the abuse had become the norm.

'I felt I deserved to be punished. I lost my independence and willpower and just accepted that was how my life was going to be. In the end, she controlled everything from which room I could sleep in to which toilet I could use. I was no longer me.'

When Richard met Sheree at a nightclub in 2000, he was a confident, fun-loving 23-year-old who went to the gym, loved music and travel, had a wide circle of friends and liked nothing more than to spend time with his family.

His mum had died when he was nine, but he was close to his dad, younger sister and extended family, including a stepmother he now calls 'Mum'.

Sheree, then 22 and hugely attractive, was, he says, 'this fun, effervescent, really confident person who everyone liked. She'd do really kind things, buy thoughtful gifts.' He remembers an early romantic break in Venice before the violence began.

She controlled everything. I was no longer me 

'I remember going to a Vivaldi concert in a church or cathedral and a meal at a nice restaurant afterwards. Walking back to the hotel by the canals was quite atmospheric — unlike memories of most of the other cities we went to, which are tainted by evenings when she'd become abusive.'

Sheree, who was from Sunderland, didn't have 'the best childhood,' he says. 'She'd moved around a lot and witnessed abuse herself. 

'She would go into detail about when her mum and dad got drunk. I wanted to help her. She was the first person I'd fallen in love with.'

The violence began a few months into their relationship when she was staying at his flat in Ipswich. The arguments would start 'always when she'd be drinking,' he says.

'They could be about anything — normally something I'd done or not done. In the early stages it was pushing me, breaking things and slapping me. The next day she'd be extremely apologetic and say she wouldn't let it happen again. 

'She'd write little notes saying she loved me. I'd apologise too because, although I wouldn't have been the one shouting, I'd feel I played a role in the argument.

'Sheree would explain her behaviour by saying, 'If you hadn't done that, then I wouldn't have done this.' You'd think, 'OK, I can see why she's saying that.'

Why he didn't end their relationship when they were merely dating is something he still can't explain.

'I've got quite a lot of blank periods in my mind,' he says. 'I felt like I was in love with her probably for years and I thought she was with me, but looking back now I don't think I'd call it love any more.'

He even excused her having an affair with a friend of his in January 2007 because, he says, 'it was my fault for working long hours and neglecting her. I had an internet business I worked on in the evening because I wanted us to be financially secure.

'She said I had also been disloyal by putting my family before her because I'd gone alone to a party at my auntie's, that she didn't want to go to, on the night the affair began. She said I deserved it — how could I have thought she was right?'

He looks truly bewildered. For a man who has lost all bearings on the narrative of his own life, he is now trying to fit together the jigsaw of his past from emails he has kept.

Following her affair, Richard's relationship with his family, whom Sheree insisted 'judged' her, became increasingly distant. He saw friends less and less.

'I have found lots of emails from Sheree telling me how much she loves me and that I am her soulmate,' he says. 'So I think the period after the affair and deciding to make a go of things must have been a nice, calm time leading up to our marriage.'

Richard says now he still believed he loved

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