Friend's STBXDH baiting her into shouting at him and secretly filming her "abuse"

[Devilledavocado]

Might need to post this in AIBU for more traffic but looking for any advice on how to help my friend.

My best friend has separated from her DH in the last week but was trying to live in the same house. He has a nasty temper and even long before they had marital difficulties often flew into a rage and shouts/swears, punches the walls etc- there is evidence of this in the fabric of their house but he has never actually hit her. If she had ever posted even a fraction of the mood swings and unreasonable behaviour she gets from him on here she would have been told to LTB. And she did three years ago when he told an occupational health review that the reason he was staying off sick was because of her financial abuse and it got referred to social services before he essentially had some sort of breakdown and got help and medicated, diagnosed with ADHD and autism and gave up his marijuana habit. She has been more withdrawn from him since they got back together, understandably as he is unstable, which angers him as he wants her to fully commit and embrace the toddler tantrum side of him but they seemed to be doing OK until the final straw last week that he has deluded himself into thinking she is having an affair. All his "evidence" ("I touched your bum and you were wearing lacy pants and then later they weren't" type stuff) is completely ridiculous and she couldn't answer any of it because it is all in his head so it has escalated to separation but I think she was relieved.

She has just rung me to say that their cleaner has warned her that he has been secretly filming while baiting her and gathering evidence of her "abuse" when he eventually gets her to shout at him and has been talking to a friend in the police about pressing charges against her. I asked her whether she had done anything that an innocent bystander might view as abusive and she said she wouldn't be covering herself in glory- that she has been baited into shouting and swearing at him. But having seen his shouting/swearing/punching walls rages over the years I would be extremely surprised if she (who naturally withdraws into her self and chooses flight over fight) could have done or said a fraction of what I have already witnessed from him over the years over really mundane issues. She agreed but since she hasn't been secretly filming him then she is now very worried that she will be made out to be the bad guy and that police/social services etc would believe him and is scared of what he is going to do.

I'm not sure what he is trying to achieve in this, other than the fact that he smokes a lot of pot again and is frankly delusional. He stopped for a while after they separated the last time but since he started again he has become obsessive and paranoid again. I thought when she said he had deviously got onto a medical marijuana trial that it would be the beginning of the end and that seems to have come true.

They have already said they are separating so I dont know if he thinks he will get a better divorce settlement or something (she is the higher earner) or if he has just been drinking the Koolaid and believes his own crap and wants everyone to think he is the victim but any advice on how to help her? And if this is likely to be taken seriously by authorities?

I wouldn’t worry about the authorities but I bet that the videos are for her family and/or mutual friends so he can pretend that he had to break up with her because she’s abusive.

100% what the previous poster said. This is what they do in order to convince others they are not the problem.

Sorry if I missed it in the op but do they kids?
if he’s filming this stuff in order to try and get a better divorce settlement in his favour then he’s going to be disappointed as it’s ‘no blame’ in the uk now .

Just had a quick Google, as sure he is on dodgy ground with secretly recording your friend.
Could be harrrassment or breach data protection.
Could be worth contacting the police herself that her cleaner has tipped her off about a secret camera.
Might also be worth contacting a domestic abuse charity for support and advice.

Hopefully. He does have form for this and really tried to convince everyone including me and their cleaner that she was abusive last time and I did listen to him and give him the benefit of the doubt and let him go through his laundry list of petty complaints and it was all quite frankly bullshit. The actual problem was him but he wanted it to be her and spent a lot of time talking crap about her to anyone that would listen. Which unfortunately ended up including social services. I cant believe he thinks anything heading that way again is going to be good for either of them or their family

It feels like he thought they were going to break up eventually and that everyone has felt sorry for her having to put up with his shit for years so he accused her of an affair as that would have made it her fault, but she didn't admit to that since he's deluded and so he is grasping at straws and saying she's abusive instead and then baiting her to capture the worst sides of her as evidence.

Yes they have kids. who have now been told for the second time in 3 years that they are separating.

I said to her the other day that it is only "no fault divorce" now not that they added the option, when she thought he was trying to pin "unreasonable behaviour" on her.

Yes my first response was that filming her is illegal. I thought if he is talking to a friend in the police they should have told him that!

Her sister is talking to a domestic abuse charity now to get advice.

How does the cleaner know this? Has the husband told her he's doing it, or has she seen any of the film? If your friend doesn't know then I assume it's a hidden camera?

I mean thre obvious answer is that she needs to stop rising to the bait. He can only use things that she has actually done ,so she should start ignoring him, however frustrating it might be
She can also get out her phone and start obviously recording him if he starts harassing her.

Yes he has happily told the cleaner, who cleans my ex husbands house as well as theirs. (And it is my own exh that friend has apparently been having an affair with as cleaner has heard all about that too!) Last time he was going round talking everyone's ears off trying to get people on his side, everyone from the cleaner to the school mums to even me and her family by showing them (carefully selected) text messages that he thought showed how horrible she was- when it was me I scrolled up and showed that he was taking it completely out of context by taking it in isolation. He didn't like it when I showed him the holes in the flawed information he was providing as evidence instead of blindly agreeing that they showed him to be a saint and her a monster! He clearly didn't take on board anything i told him then about keeping his nose clean and rising above petty squabbles and not trying to blacken her name in order to polish his own as it wasn't in the best interests of their family in the future!

She obviously won't be rising to the bait any more, but is worried that he is already going down this path. And the more distant she becomes that will aggravate him and he will antagonise her even more. I dont think they can go ahead with their plan to both stay living in the house (her in spare room) in light of this.

I suspect he’s coming across to everyone as the paranoid, pot-smoking crank that he is. I’d report the secret filming to the police in your friend’s shoes (it’s probably a load of twaddle but he’s making these claims so why not have them looked into- it’s him who’d be in the wrong if it’s true) and get to a safe place far away from him.

This sounds like abuse. By showing everyone these videos, he seems to be wanting to isolate her from her friends and support group.

I used to work in this area and it’s a very common tactic used by abusers to abuse their victims further. As soon as I was shown all the video “evidence” my antenna would go on high alert and with other evidence it became pretty clear pretty quickly who the abuser was.

I think she needs to get advice from her local domestic abuse team and would also strongly urge her to report to the police. If he thinks his tactic isn’t achieving his desired outcome, he would potentially escalate.

I have no advice other than to say this happened to me with my ex husband. It’s a horrific feeling and it still haunts me even though me and my ex are on decent terms now and co parent really well somehow miraculously.

Very similar situation in I wanted a divorce (he didn’t) and we got stuck living together as neither one of us could leave. He has always been a bit reclusive and resented me going out once a week. It caused no end of arguments. He saw me leaving the house for what was literally 6 hours a week as me ‘abandoning him with our children’. He also had an addiction to vapes and was spending ungodly amounts on them.

Anyway I discovered that he had been secretly recording me. He would bait me into an argument by saying things like he wished I was dead and the kids would be better off without me. When I eventually snapped and would retaliate with similar he’d record it and send it to my mum to try and prove I was crazy. Him and my mum would exchange messages about how awful and disgusting I am. I also discovered that he was telling my mother I wasn’t doing food shops or buying the kids nappies and I’d gone out (on that one day a week) and left him without either. This was a trick he’d use with his mum to get her to send him money so he could buy vapes. Unfortunately for him my mum lives five minutes away so she’d just drop him off food and nappies. He only did it twice with her as he wasn’t getting money from her and off course we had food and nappies! I do online food shops so I have every receipt of this!

Two years later I have somewhat forgiven him for it. We co parent well and I think he was genuinely going through a bad time with the divorce. He’s been extremely sorry for his actions and told me how ashamed of himself he is.

The downside however is he has caused no ends of issues with my mother. We don’t get on, she’s a vicious woman who has been awful to me (and him!) since we had children. That’s a whole other thread! He knew this and that’s exactly why he targeted her. When I eventually went no contact she threatened me with these videos knowing full well what my ex had done. I’ll never forget or forgive being told that she won’t let me deny her grandchildren from her and if I try she’ll take me to court and win as she has everything she needs in these videos to get exactly what she wants. I live in fear everyday that she’ll do something vindictive with them.

some of the things you have said have triggered a reminder of other things he has been known to do- last time they split they were doing birds nest parenting where they took it in turns to be in the house with the kids. At one point he was telling me (and therefore probably every man and his dog) how awful she was because he had come back to the house to find that there was "no food" in the fridge and in fact even some mouldy fruit on the dish.... I am pretty sceptical of all his claims by this point and say it isnt her job to cater for his periods and he is perfectly capable of shopping for himself, and that I often find mouldy fruit and throw it away and she might be a bit busy with all the divorce related nightmare she is having to do on top of working full time while hes off sick....
When I mentioned these "allegations" to her she said she actually hadn't been in the house that week at all as they had been with her family! And also that when he says "no food" he basically means the things HE would eat for lunch eg ham and cheese. The sort of things she would do them and the kids for lunch like pasta and tuna and sweetcorn- most definitely available but not what he expects his housekeeper to provide for his own preferences.

Hi all will see if I get any responses on here and possibly start a new thread. Things aren't getting any better and friend has asked me to come up with a plan!

So they have both been living in the house for the last three weeks. He claimed the master bedroom as "his" and put a lock on it. She's in the spare room although his solution to this was suggesting they move their ADHD unsettled daughter out of her room so she could have a bigger one... She said no as she genuinely has the kids interests at heart even though he claims the same but is clearly only interested in himself.

He is still going around slandering her to everyone who will listen, even her own parents. He is so paranoid and delusional that he's now accused her of multiple affairs and has said that one of the way she has"abused" him is by having sex with him straight after fucking someone else (my exH in fact). He claims to want to be amicable and sort out the divorce without lawyers or mediators but all the while she is having to put up with very disgusting explicit descriptions of his completely false paranoid delusions. She said she hasn't so much as held another man's hand in the last twenty years and I believe her( and she despises my exH so no way).

I have always thought there was an abuser in their relationship but it has never been her. Unfortunately as he behaved worse and worse and she withdrew he got more and more irate about her "denying him love" and says he is the injured party.

There is no doubt in my mind that he is paranoid and delusional and manipulative and she is basically scared of her own shadow and afraid of what he will do next. I think she should speak to women's aid or the police. Any thoughts? They are stuck in the house together until they sell (or someone officially sends for the men in white coats which feels appropriate)

She needs to get herself a lawyer as a matter of urgency.

I’ve been on the wrong end of a lot of false accusations, to authorities- police, GP, school, social services, court. The place it bites worse is court, as they seem to quickly write it all off as “he said she said” and pressure you to settle as if you are both as bad as each other, it’s very long and expensive to get to a fact finding hearing for them to actually decide who is lying. I’d say yes see womens aid and log with police, and maybe put some comms out to all the relevant authorities saying she’s having problems with her husband having paranoid delusions since his medical marijuana and to please contact her for clarification in the event of any allegations being made. Particularly mention the mental health concern to his GP, with examples.
Women’s aid may be able to help find affordable accommodation and relatively affordable legal advice- solicitors do cost a bomb though so I’d probably prioritise getting out of there if money is tight. Evidence of abuse might help her with getting legal aid. Communicating via WhatsApp/text messages only while not great for nourishing relationships may help her keep calmer and stop things escalating, or provide evidence. She needs to prioritise getting her stress levels down any way she can to be able to deal with it, you can be a big help with this. Get her walking/exercising and having time out to get perspective, the stress levels in that house will be going up and up and it’s bad for everyone involved. Best wishes.

This is currently happening to me. Social services are involved and it’s an absolute nightmare- they’ve made the situation 100 x worse. Police are collecting evidence of coercive control due to the videos and audios he has of me telling him to fuck off and leave me alone (as he followed me room to room swearing at me and telling me I was now used goods and nobody would have me- I had PND at the time and he used to hit me). Tell her to keep a diary of any arguments, etc. and log these with the police though if children are involved, social services will become involved.

@CountingDownToAutumnyoure a better woman than me. Not a day goes by that i wish my stbxh dies a terrible death. There’s so to my story but ive been on the verge of a nervous breakdown with the chaos he’s caused with his lies.

She needs to speak to a lawyer and explain everything. I don't think I would assume the filming was only for friends and family.

Thanks all, sorry to hear others are going through this

Massive red flags for domestic abuse and coercive control - your friend is living in a very dangerous situation. Please help her to tell the police ideally with additional legal help to get something like a non molestation order and him removed from the house to safeguard them.

I had this years ago when my ex was attempting to show he was vindicated in leaving. (FYI he had been having an affair and looking to green light leaving our new baby and toddler)

Not only would he bait then film (for example - of course I’m leaving you are ugly/boring/fat/stupid et al - and film my reaction) - but he’d also lie on the floor so getting an angle that looked as if I was towering over him.

I learned later it was based on a Scientology documentary showing tactics used there.

It was most certainly unpleasant and premeditated- so do check your friend is not being set up in a similar fashion.

Hope helpful - what a lovely frond you are to be looking for advice.

This may be a helpful watch and other resources on the same site

False Allegations And DARVO webinar