My wife, my abuser on Netflix.

[YourAmplePlumPoster]

Can you imagine the police showing the same sympathy to a woman in this situation? I'm afraid I can't having been a DV survivor. Sympathy, let alone protection was totally absent. This was years ago but I don't think much has changed.

Well-done he recorded it all.
The photos and the videos.
Without it would have been harder to prove.
She was a nasty nasty piece of work.
I hope she never tries to reconcile with him.

Agree. Those two should be ashamed of themselves.

Yes! That was a terrible one.

Indeed, this woman is an abuser but I wonder how many policeman cry about injuries or abuse of women. The high numbers of women dying suggest they don't.

Jesus Christ the responses on this thread.

Absolutely fine to start the thread because I was watching the documentary thinking yes this kind of horrific abuse is experienced by women every day and they're not getting Netflix documentaries about it.

But she SHIT ON HIS HEAD. She beat him with a wine bottle for days and left him disfigured, She abused him in front of their small children. I'm actually disgusted by the people trying to find a reason why this is his fault. You appal me.

I think it's possible to feel an initial glimmer of sympathy for both sides, given that they both found themselves in a hugely unhappy marriage having plainly 'settled' to a degree in terms of their spouse, she accepting a husband who was a good couple of notches below her in attractiveness terms & who you might reasonably argue came across as a bit of a 'drip', he accepting a wife who was a couple of notches below him in socio-economic terms & who can't have been good company at the best of times. But of course any sympathy for her evaporates entirely when you see the severity of her behaviour, especially in front of the kids. like others I found it a little strange that her obviously chronic drink problem wasn't discussed more, she sounded like she was paralytic for many of those incidents.

you might come across as a bit of a drip if you had been abused for years and had all the fight literally beaten out of you. Anyone would surely? He was a broken man. And there is more to life than looks . She was no.beauty Queen herself without the makeup and having aged 20 yrs either.

How she kept smashing the wine bottle off his ear for days after. That is PSYCHOTIC. Anyone defending her needs their head looked at.

I suppose I mostly meant the way he described his mates having nicknamed him 'dancing queen' before he'd met her, and how she'd seemingly then joined in with the mockery.

I would never criticise an abuse victim for their reaction. I thought he reacted with a decent amount of dignity other than possibly being a bit late to get social services involved given that he had video evidence.

yes I see what you mean now. I had forgotten that about his mates. I kept saying to my husband that he was too nice ! Sad he was treated so appallingly as he seemed such a genuine guy.

She was prettyish when they first met, had nice eyes, blond and slim. That's it, nothing special. He wasn't bad looking when younger, had nice eyes. Clearly a nice person. People going on that she was a bit better looking so must have been frustrated which is why she beat him are disgusting. I was a 10 when in my 20's, exH a 4, he was still abusive to me so that argument doesn't work. Stop trying to twist it. Just because it's usually men who are abusive doesn't mean a man deserves to be abused by a woman to "make up for it". I think it's a shame he didn't lose his temper back and knock her down a peg or 2, personally.

Quoted the wrong poster in my last comment, apologies.

I agree, she definitely wasn't all that. He is a good looking man, I wouldn't consider her out of his league. Have you seen her mugshot, she looks like she was electrocuted .

I agree. I’m watching it on Netflix now and I do feel sorry for Richard, how can you not? But the responses of the officers are really interesting because I cannot see them reacting this way if the victim was a woman. The officer that actually cried in front of him? Definitely wouldn’t have done that if it was a woman

"Statistically, why on earth are they not making programmes highlighting the much bigger issue that is male violence as opposed to this rarity"

Imagine the reaction if this thread has been about one of the many female victims and someone posted " what about the poor menz".....

I know this sounds like the plot of a film, but it's not beyond the reach of possibility that he engineered this to a certain extent. He was in a miserable marriage to a violent, unstable alcoholic who had no qualms about exposing her kids to the worst behaviours. If he walked out he was in for a painful expensive fight over custody and property.

Putting up the camera, breadcrumbing information to his neighbours, presenting as the perfect victim to the police officers (very Princess Di posturing on the sofa)... the outcome was that he got rid of her, possession of the house and 100% custody of his kids. Does anyone have any idea of what's likely to happen in terms of access when she's released from prison?

Maybe I've watched too many films, but something just didn't ring true about him.

I'm not sure that what you describe counts as him "engineering this". I agree that it seems they both in the end had an objective to basically drive the other out of the house leaving them in the driving seat in terms of custody and residency. Her tactic to achieve this was objective was seemingly to regularly get plastered and subject him to plausibly deniable intolerable abuse in front of the kids. His tactic was to film her doing this. He won and deservedly so.

I wouldn't care to watch it again but am I right in saying that the abuse always took place in front of the kids, never when the two of them were alone? I suppose it's possible that she had some kind of long post natal type issues which meant she was hyper on edge while the kids were around but calmed down a lot after they'd gone to bed?

He deserved to get the house and custody. Living with a raging violent alcoholic like that is a nightmare. My point is that many more women go through this and the police fail to protect them.

I cannot believe some of the responses on this thread. People saying he deserved it because he’s a ‘drip’?! If his wife thought he was a drip then she could leave him, not shit on his head, beat him with a wine bottle and terrorise him for years! Absolutely zero understanding of trauma and how that can impact people interpersonally, he came across utterly traumatised in the documentary.

PP suggesting he engineered the abuse because he had the sense to document it?! This is so victim blaming and ignorant that it’s actually painful. Nobody forced his deranged wife to shit on his head, beat him and threaten him with a massive knife. Nothing can justify the abuse she inflicted on him, all responsibility and blame lies solely with her. People need to educate themselves before spouting such nonsense.

What's your point? She had post natal depression for 7 years so it doesn't matter that she was abusive and violent in front of the children and traumatised them plus gave them cause for emotional and relationship issues later in life? Because she "couldn't help it"? Utter nonsense. That's not hyper on edge darling, it's psychotic behaviour. Also her behaviour started before they married and had children so theory makes even less sense.

It wasn’t always infront of the children. The fact she was abusive infront of the children - and they didn’t seem phased by it - is even more scary, as her abuse was normalised to the extent that the children knew nothing else.
She is an abuser and no ‘post natal issues’ excuse it, strange to even suggest that.