Good Afternoon,
I married in New York almost five years ago a woman I met on a dating site (it was through a UK dating site and it initially appeared she lived in Glasgow, (though this was the first lie)
Very briefly:
She seemed so plausible and succesful, I went over to live in Manhatten with her, putting my UK home under the care of some friends, and we got married. I could work at that time from any location in the world so it was no issue. Whilst there she was arrested for shoplifting and sacked from her job for misappropriation of funds. Somehow she convinced me that none of this was her fault and we decided to return to the UK which is really what she wanted. I applied for a Spouse approval Visa for her. Things began to unravel once she had managed to come and live with me in the UK. Looking back there were so many red flags but I ignored them. I thought I had met the most perfect partner ever.
(One thing to point out and it does have a bearing is I have ADHD. It makes my life difficult but I am still managing to run a company with 17 employees. It does however make me extremely poor at logging or noting things which might just prove to be a huge problem)
Without going into too much detail there started a relationship which has been for the most part I can only describe as being in an Alternative Universe. Most of her back story was untrue. I found evidence of a string of convictions, she had had her last boyfriend on an exclusion order from his apartment. We even found another marriage which she had not declared and it seems she has never had a divorce. It was never declared at the marriage to me and further she claimed that her Mother was born in the UK and this was shown on the marriage certificate. That is completely untrue as well. Even after 5 years I don't still really know her at all. It has been a continual campaign of control, psychological and physical abuse which I seemed powerless to fight against. She has stolen money from myself and my company throughout the period, taken loans against my name without my knowledge, false credit cards etc etc. She is a compulsive liar at all times on every subject. Two and half years ago I almost broke free and made a report of all the theft etc to the police and the Home Office but some weeks later I was convinced by her she had made a huge mistake, totally changed and begged to come back. I agreed and cancelled the police action and wrote to the Home office retracting my statement. For a month or two it was fine but the cycles just began repeating themselves yet again. She even took a job but I now find she was sacked for stealing from the till.
Now to the real issues (if the above was not bad enough) Firstly the Home office actual did cancel her Visa in May 2019. I did not know and from my side, only recently found out. I think it was due to the notification I sent. In the last six months for the first time it appeared the relationship was improving and we seemed to have on the surface a good relationship. I was even standing up for her against this Home Office rejection of her Visa. What I didn't know (and I am not even sure for how long for sure) but I believe it could be years, is she had been reporting me for abuse, making allegations of my mental stability. In general undermining me to at least some of the authorities and certainly creating a whole backstory to a large number of people and all the time I was oblivious to this. Furthermore she again started taking money from my business using my card details to buy online from Amazon. Where she was clever is she occasionally bought something for the house or the business with it. Most of it though on items for herself. I thought the relationship was going well so although I have it on record telling her to stop she continued and has been trying to continue almost daily (everything is now blocked from the accounts but the bank sends me reports). I was at my factory a number of weeks ago and suddenly received a telephone call from my Doctor asking if I was OK? Turned out she had rung the doctor in the middle of the night when I was fast asleep saying I was having a psychotic episode and they needed to get me to hospital. You can imagine my surprise at hearing this. I didn't confront her immediately but tried to find out more. I found in the same week she had called the police and the abuse centres and god knows who else with the same story. I finally confronted her, on the Bank Holiday Monday just passed, but in a calm and quiet manner. She immediately called the police, berated the operator for letting me know!!! and demanded they remove me. They came and clearly saw I was rational and not a threat to her so they left leaving myself and my wife still at the home. I stayed out in the garden (we have two and a half acres) just to let things calm down but when I walked back to the house about an hour later the whole house had been barricaded, with my dogs inside with her. I called the police again but basically they said it was a Civil dispute and there was nothing they could do. The officer told me to get a solicitor quickly on the case as he had seen this sort of thing before and it never went well. Reluctantly I left to a hotel and then sort help. The solicitors I contacted did not seem to see any urgency in the problem but applied for a court injunction. I wanted to give them all the proofs from the problem a few years earlier but they did not want to see this as they said it will make it too complicated. In the meantime they told me to not contact my wife or go anywhere near the house. I contacted the police to both show the money taken from myself and the company and also to explain what had happened and so forth. They basically told me they did not have enough evidence. It was one word against another and a Civil case. They even told me the possible Bigamy was a civil matter!! In short they wanted nothing to do with it. I also contacted the Home Office again and the enforcement officers in my area to report all what was happening.
In the meantime luckily (the home is in a small village, though quite isolated) my neighbours were keeping an eye on the property. My wife had chained all the entry gates to the house and closed all the curtains. Last weekend they rang to tell me there was a large removal van on a Sunday at the property. I called the Police and they finally arrived and we climbed the gate together. It turned out she was selling all my music studio gear, I had a large fully functioning studio with all the instruments etc, (worth a fortune) to a company based 250 miles away at a forced sale price. She told the officer with me that she was putting the items in storage. To which he was saying that is perfectly alright but the company buying the goods at least was honest and came to explain that she had told them I had died six months ago of Covid !!!! and they were removing the goods which she had carefully itemised for them. They also said she told them tomorrow an antique dealer was coming to take away all my antiques which I have a collected over 40 years and many are extremely valuable. Even with this , in effect a crime taking place in front of his eyes the officer kept on saying, as my wife she has a right to do this. I was so annoyed I told him to bring a senior officer over, two more police came. The goods were put back in the house but again no action taken at all. Civil matter was all they said. They warned her not to remove anything more thankfully. However I was still refused access to my house to check what was there or not or even to see my dogs who were locked up in a bedroom upstairs.
Immediately the next day after this I contacted my solicitors who had an injunction hearing a few days later. They now wanted all the information of the crimes in the past and when they discussed this with the Barrister who would have represented my injunction to the Court they decided it was so serious that they could not risk doing it as planned and we would have to look at the whole case to find a better solution !! They did contact the police and it seems she had been making claims of me stealing from her and all sorts of other problems, she was scared for her life etc etc. For this reason the police do not want to get involved. As they say throw enough mud and some sticks. She has never paid for anything in the house, in the relationship ever !!! It turns out though she has been researching how to avoid deportation and even accused me, to the police, of destroying her passport which is completely farcical and yet again another baseless allergation against me. (Thinking about it that might be because she feels deportation might be imminent, I guess, and in some way not having a passport might delay things further)
So here I am , I am now seeing a better solicitor next week because I think my first did not take the case seriously enough, I have the police doing nothing even though there is still the case from two and half years ago on record, I have no news from the Home Office at all. I am now nearly a month locked out of my home, unable to see or know the condition of my dogs (two lurchers) who mean a huge amount to me, I have a few clothes in a case and that's it.
I have two questions: Firstly, and most urgently, has anyone experienced anything similar and what do I do? What worked to help you resolve this? She is such a professional criminal, that it seems everyone is believing her even when shown (like the tale of my demise) that she doesn't say one word that is truthful. In fact, everything she has done to me she has just reversed it 180 degrees to say I did all of these things. I feel powerless and the court system might take months or years to sort this out, if at all.
My second question is why, as someone who I would say was rational and fairly sensible did I continue to stay all this time with someone who clearly has been using me from the start? I wish I had an answer to this.
My daughter suggested I look at your site and I must say I had no idea that this lack of care on the part of the authorities seems to be systemic in the system. If I stole money, at even a fraction of the amount she has defrauded me out of, I would be locked away for years. Perhaps in the end it is not the financial damage which is worst but the psychological damage she has inflicted which will prove much harder to recover from. She is clearly laughing at our system and shows absolutely no sign of any guilt or remorse over what she is doing , as I suspect this has not been the first time she has done it, will go on probably to do this again to some other poor unwitting person but now in this country. You cannot believe how little consideration seems to be given by the law and our justice system to someone whose only fault was to be too trusting and perhaps, with hindsight, somewhat naive.
