Religion is a Mental Illness

Interviewer #1: When did you realize things were going so badly wrong? What happened?

Richard Spencer: Um it's a difficult question, because it happened over such a long period of time. So, you know, things were really incremental. So, at the beginning it would just be like maybe pushing and shoving or slapping and those kinds of things were quite normalized, almost, on TV. If you were to watch a soap opera, it quite often if a man's had an affair or something, you'd see like, the wife, like slapping him or pushing or something. It was never, you know, there was no mention of domestic abuse or anything wrong with that was almost perceived to be normal for ladies to hit men. I think. it, because it was it was sporadic and in the beginning and minimal, you know, didn't raise any warning signs at that time. Obviously over time, you know, things got worse.

And there's a domestic abuse cycle where there's like a tension phase when things build up and you know something's going to happen. Then there'll be an incident, then there'll be like a reconciliation where the person will apologize and she would, you know, she would write notes and tell me that she loved me and say it would never happen again and give reasons why those things would happen.

Interviewer #1: And how long, you talk about that tension phase, how long would that go on for, and when you were in that phase, would you then always know that something was looming?

Spencer: Yeah, I mean in the beginning, the tension phase, it was very short. There would be hardly any tension then there'd just be an incident. But in the, towards the end of the 20 years, you know, the tension phase could last for days. I'd know that something was going to happen and then there was no reconciliation towards the end. There'd be no apology and it was go straight to kind of a period of calm. But that calm period, you know, it could last for months and months and nothing would happen. And I'd think, oh everything's going to be okay again and she's changed and, but yeah she never did change.

Interviewer #2: How bad did it get?

Spencer: Um. yeah, it got-- I mean just before she was arrested, you know, she would just get up in the morning and start drinking wine and then she'd be asleep on the sofa for a few hours then get up and you know drink some more wine. And then there'd be incidents of abuse. You know, towards the end I pretty much given up so I felt completely trapped at the end because I knew she wasn't going to change.

But then because she'd done things like, she'd threatened that she would tell the police that I was the abuser, and sometimes when I'd restrained her to stop her from hurting me, she'd have like marks on her wrist, and she'd claim that she' sent pictures to her friends or to neighbors and tell them that I was the abuser. Then during an incident, she'd open a window and she shout out of the window, "stop it Richard, you're hurting me." And then, in my mind I didn't know if people did think that was me that was the abuser.

And financially, you know, [..] we were living beyond our means. She knew that and I was getting deep, deep deeper into debt. The thing is, I could never leave really.

Adele Jenkinson: And when I bailed Sheree and I told her that this is what's happening and she was getting taken to Leeds and that Richard had packed an overnight bag, she turned to me, and she goes, "Well, I hope he's packed my hair straighteners."

And I just thought that was so weird, and, yes, I am impartial, but there was just something in me that just had to say to her at that moment in time, "Your children are OK, by the way." She never… For the entire duration, she never asked how her children were or where her children were. And I just felt I couldn't help myself but bring her back down to reality, really. It's not about hair straighteners. We've got a bigger picture. We've got your children. We've got the care of your children and the future of your children in this investigation, and all she wanted to talk about was her hair straighteners.

The following day, when I spoke to Richard about her overnight bag, because he said, "How is Sheree? I bet she was really emotional. |'m really worried for her." Even after she was arrested, even after he's opened his heart and told us everything that's happened for the last 20 years, his main concern was making sure that Sheree was OK the following day.

So, I had to… Again, there was almost, like, a reality bump situation going on. I had to bring him down a bit, and I said, "Richard," I said, "She's not bothered about the children or about you. There was no emotion there. She asked if you'd packed her hair straighteners."

With that, Richard burst out crying. I'd only seen him for ten minutes that morning, and I was like, "Oh, gosh, if we're crying already, it's gonna be a long day." But he said, "I did pack her hair straighteners." He said, "I knew exactly what she wanted me to pack," and he goes, "And that's why I packed her hair straighteners."

So, in this twisted, dysfunctional family, Sheree and Richard knew each other so well and they were so intertwined in a really twisted way that he knew exactly where her thoughts were gonna be that day, and she knew that Richard wouldn't let her down.

Richard Spencer: I would, like, analyse the kids myself, and I got to think, I probably got to the point where I would over-analyse things. So, a lot of the things, the behaviours they might have and normal parents would think it would be just part of growing up, I can never think that, cos I always think, "ls it just a normal part of growing up "or is it because of what they have witnessed Sheree do to me, or what they've heard Sheree do to me?"

So, during arguments, it would be our eldest daughter, that she would say to her, "Why don't you go next door to the neighbour and tell the neighbour that Daddy's hitting Mummy?" Or, "Tell them that Daddy's a nasty man."

And, erm... You know...

And I would reassure her. I would say to her, that, erm, you know, "If Mummy asks you anything when she's angry..." Erm... I would say to her, erm, "|t doesn't matter what you say to Mummy in front of Daddy", I used to say, "You just tell Mummy what you think Mummy wants you to say." And I'd say, "I will always love you. So it doesn't matter what you say in front of me to Mummy." And, erm, she'd say, "OK." And then I'd say, "OK", and I'd give her, like, a wink.

And then, erm, inevitably, an argument would happen later on, and Sheree would say something to her along the lines of, "Do you want... Do you want Daddy to stay in the house, or do you want him to go?" And, erm, would look at me and, erm... Obviously, she wouldn't want me to go, but she would look back at mum and say, "I want Daddy to go. I want Daddy to leave." And then Sheree would say, "See?" As ridiculous as it sounds. You know, "No-one wants you. Everyone wants you to leave."

And then, erm... And then, erm... When, er... When her mum wasn't looking, and she'd turn around, and then my eldest daughter would then turn and look at me and she would smile, and, erm, and then she would try and give a wink to show that she knew that I was OK with what she'd said, and she wasn't in any trouble, so that she didn't feel upset-upset by it.

Richard Spencer: When she… When she locks me out, I, erm, I go to the side of the house, where the boiler is, so if it's that cold, it's not as cold, because the heat comes off the boiler, so I sit there.

Adele Jenkinson: No-one should ever know where a hotspot in their building is from the outside.

It's a beautiful big building. He paid for that building. He paid to live in that property. And yet he knew exactly where the hotspot was on the outside to get some warmth when he used to get kicked out.

He felt like he was handling it, he felt like he was in control of it. He felt that he could put up with the abuse, if it meant that he got the family life that he wanted, and that he felt like he deserved.

So he was happy, to an extent, to continue their dysfunctional family. If it meant that he had a family to go home to. And it was the risk of losing that family, that drove him to collect all his exhibits. He didn't want to, he didn't want to collect any evidence against his wife.

He wanted his wife to turn out to be happy. And he tried to do everything he could to make her happy. They had children. It was a long journey for them. He worked really hard, he had a really stressful job. She had a stressful job as well, you know, they were both working hard to get to where they wanted to be, but they never seemed to be able to reach the destination that they were getting to and... they never got to the stage where Sheree was happy.

I sent some videos of the evidence I've got, of what Sheree had done to me to Tony. And see... for him to have watched them and tell me... I think I said something like, "can you tell me if I'm overreacting or I'm doing the right thing?" Because I really didn't trust my own decision making.

And I sent him the videos and then a little bit later, he gave me a call and he said, "you're definitely not overreacting." And he said that, erm... that he'd been affected quite badly by what he'd seen.

He says, "I'm worried about you", he says, "it's obvious that Sheree's really drunk again." "I know that she's been physically abusive towards you" and erm... says "things hadn't got any better" and he says, "I don't think things..." "I don't think things are going to get any better for you."

... just wait a second.

So he says, erm... "I know you don't want me to tell anyone" but he says, "I've got to do what I think is the right thing to do." And so he says, "I'll probably have to do something, you know, you might not necessarily think is good for you, might not agree with at the time" but he says, "I hope that..." erm... He says, "I hope that eventually, after I've done it, that... you'll forgive me and you'll know... I did it for the right reasons."

Secret camera footage shows battered husband threatened with a knife

A hidden nanny cam gave a vital way out for battered husband Richard Spencer, 47, as he endured years of degrading abuse from his wife Shere

Mail Online

• Sheree Spencer, 45, terrorised husband Richard at their East Yorks home
• C5 documentary 'My Wife, My Abuser: The Secret Footage' airs Monday

Chilling never-before-seen footage from a nanny cam has revealed the moment a battered husband cowered on the floor while his wife hurled abuse at him and brandished a knife in their home during her 20-year reign of terror.

Damning videos of Sheree Spencer's attacks on husband Richard at their seven-bedroom home in Bubwith, East Yorkshire, were captured on cameras the couple had installed to monitor their children.

And explosive clips from police interviews show Sheree casually lying about her husband being the abuser, only for her face to turn ashen when confronted with the footage. 

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

Sheree, 45, was jailed for four years at Hull Crown Court in March 2023 by Judge Kate Rayfield, who told her: 'This is the worst case of controlling and coercive behaviour I have seen.'

Now, Mr Spencer is sharing his story in vivid detail in Channel 5 documentary My Wife, My Abuser: The Secret Footage, which airs on Monday.

And today, MailOnline can reveal Sheree went to desperate lengths through the courts in a bid to stop the documentary being broadcast. 

The footage, obtained from the nanny-cam, gives a chilling real-life echo of Harlan Coben's Netflix adaptation Fool Me Once, starring Michelle Keegan. In it, Keegan plays a woman who installs the small camera to keep watch over her young daughter, only to recognise an eerie figure from her past creeping into her home.

Mr Spencer felt his harrowing experiences should be seen to raise awareness of the type of abuse men can suffer in their daily lives at the hands of violent partners but Sheree tried to block it.

He told Mailonline: 'Sheree tried to stop the documentary being broadcast in the crown court but failed, then she applied for a prohibited steps order through the family court, which luckily was rejected and thrown out at the first hearing.

'The broadcast has been delayed due to the legal challenges for about six months, but now it is finally going to be shown.

'I'm hopeful that the film will be well received and will make a difference.'

The hidden nanny cam gave a vital way out for battered husband Mr Spencer after he endured years of physical and verbal abuse from his wife, that left him 'broken' on the floor in a foetal position.

Mr Spencer had met his wife in a nightclub in 2000, and the pair married on a Thai beach in 2009.

After they welcomed the eldest of their three daughters in 2015, Mr Spencer installed the nanny cam so they could keep watch over her.

Instead, footage showed furious wine-fuelled tirades, in which Sheree would call her husband 'fat boy,' 'a p**sy' and 'dumb dumb' and inflict bruises and scratches that he would need to cover with make-up before going outside. 

Mr Spencer told The Sun: 'We had two [cameras] — one in the playroom and one in the bedroom. They were there for reassurance, to keep an eye out because it's a big house.

'It was on something like a 28-day roll, where if something new came in it would delete the old footage.'

When police finally became involved, Mr Spencer handed over 43 images of his bruised face, taken on different dates following savage assaults he had suffered. 

A police officer tells the documentary: 'This has been going on for such a long time, that this is who he is. Withdrawn and broken.'

Mr Spencer says: 'I just wanted the abuse to stop. I was in a situation and there was no way out.'

Hull Crown Court heard that mother-of-three Sheree had carried out most of the attacks on her husband in the family home.

Sheree worked at the highest levels for HM Prison and Probation Service and bragged to friends that she had the ear of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

She was a project manager in the department's directorate of strategy and performance.

A former friend said: 'She would brag about being only two down from the Prime Minister in her field and had meetings with Boris Johnson, who she spoke of as though he were a friend.

'She was bragging about her high flying career while subjecting her poor husband, a lovely man, to daily abuse, degradation and humiliation.'

It was described as 'a great irony' that Spencer had done so much work aimed at investigating the effect of custodial sentences on the family.

Within months of becoming a couple in 2000, Richard Spencer endured her violent rages, which happened whether she was drunk or sober.

The worst of the assaults on him happened in April 2021 when his wife attacked him with the empty wine bottle.

Mr Spencer, who stands at 5ft 10in, told the court that although he was bigger and physically stronger than his petite wife, he did not fight back when she began to attack him.

He said he became almost immune to the physical abuse she meted out, even though she would cause him immense pain by sinking her teeth into him.

But he said the mental scars left by 16 years of her hate-filled attacks were what would leave the most lasting effect.

Sheree's reign of domestic terror finally ended in June 2021 when the police were called to their family home by a concerned welfare worker.

Her arrest that day on suspicion of assaulting her husband opened a door into the hell he had kept private for his entire married life.  

Mr Spencer said: 'In trying to block the footage being shown, she continued trying to exert control even from jail, but fortunately justice prevailed.

'It’s astonishing to me that she’s living a relatively easy life in prison, having been moved to an open jail after six months of her sentence.

'The judge in her case described it as the worst case or coercive control she had ever seen, so why she was considered for open prison so early is beyond me.

'She is due for release next February but she is able to go out for family and friend meetings and has been working in a cafe.

'It doesn’t seem a just sentence for someone who committed such serious offences.'

Since his ex-wife's imprisonment, Mr Spencer has joined a campaign called ManKind Initiative, which supports male victims of domestic abuse.

He has also found love again and told media he is happily settled with his new partner. 

Speaking to media after Sheree was jailed last year, he said: 'I have become resigned to the fact that I will never fully recover from her abuse and that it will have a permanent damaging impact on mine and my family's life.

'Sheree's abuse towards me evolved and escalated over time, she used repeated acts of physical assault, threats, verbal abuse, and humiliation to punish and exercise control over me.

'The abuse was hidden from the outside world, including friends and family. Sheree manipulated me into believing that I was a responsible and willing participant in the abuse. She remorselessly proclaimed that I deserved to be punished, and that it was a justifiable consequence of me disappointing her in some way.

'Little by little, I lost my independence and willpower and just accepted that was how my life was going to be. I complied with Sheree's demands, and she controlled most aspects of my everyday life, including things like what activities I could participate in and when, which room I could sleep in, and even which toilet I could use.

'Gradually I became isolated from family and friends and was left deep in debt causing me to feel trapped.'

'After a while, I learnt to cover my face with my hands and curl up into a foetal position to try and avoid sustaining any visible facial injuries, so that I could still take the children to school and nursery.'

Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence

Objectives. We sought to examine the prevalence of reciprocal (i.e., perpetrated by both partners) and nonreciprocal intimate partner violen

PubMed Central (PMC)

Objectives. We sought to examine the prevalence of reciprocal (i.e., perpetrated by both partners) and nonreciprocal intimate partner violence and to determine whether reciprocity is related to violence frequency and injury.

Methods. We analyzed data on young US adults aged 18 to 28 years from the 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which contained information about partner violence and injury reported by 11 370 respondents on 18761 heterosexual relationships.

Results. Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases. Reciprocity was associated with more frequent violence among women (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]=2.3; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.9, 2.8), but not men (AOR=1.26; 95% CI=0.9, 1.7). Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women (AOR=1.3; 95% CI=1.1, 1.5), and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator (AOR=4.4; 95% CI=3.6, 5.5).

Conclusions. The context of the violence (reciprocal vs nonreciprocal) is a strong predictor of reported injury. Prevention approaches that address the escalation of partner violence may be needed to address reciprocal violence.

(PDF) References Examining Assaults by Women on Their Spouses or Male Partners: An Updated Annotated Bibliography

PDF | This annotated bibliography describes 343 scholarly investigations (270 empirical studies and 73 reviews) demonstrating that women are

ResearchGate

This annotated bibliography describes 343 scholarly investigations (270 empirical studies and 73 reviews) demonstrating that women are as physically aggressive as men (or more) in their relationships with their spouses or opposite-sex partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 440,850 people.

(PDF) Thirty Years of Denying the Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence: Implications for Prevention and Treatment

PDF | The first part of this article summarizes results from more than 200 studies that have found gender symmetry in perpetration and in ri

ResearchGate

The first part of this article summarizes results from more than 200 studies that have found gender symmetry in perpetration and in risk factors and motives for physical violence in martial and dating relationships. It also summarizes research that has found that most partner violence is mutual and that self-defense explains only a small percentage of partner violence by either men or women. The second part of the article documents seven methods that have been used to deny, conceal, and distort the evidence on gender symmetry. The third part of the article suggests explanations for the denial of an overwhelming body of evidence by reputable scholars. The concluding section argues that ignoring the overwhelming evidence of gender symmetry has crippled prevention and treatment programs. It suggests ways in which prevention and treatment efforts might be improved by changing ideologically based programs to programs based on the evidence from the past 30 years of research