Laura Lyons married Farouk Ali in
October 2010, but she filed for divorce after years in the abusive and
controlling relationship
Imagine.
You’re embroiled in a bitter divorce case, trying to sort out a
financial settlement for yourself and your two-year-old daughter, having
fled the family home after years of violence and abuse. A Family Court
judge has already granted a decree nisi: surely the end of this wearying
legal contest must be near?
And
then your ex drops his bombshell. According to a court document
submitted by his solicitor, two weeks before he married you in England,
he wed a woman you’ve never heard of in Bangladesh. You were never his
wife at all.
Now
he wants you to agree that, instead of a divorce, you should instead be
granted an annulment. At first, he also wants you to withdraw any claim
on his assets.
If that sounds bad enough, for businesswoman Laura Lyons, there was all this – and more.
In
the court document, issued in February, her former partner, a wealthy
Devon restaurant owner named Farouk Ali, claimed she had always known he
was already married. However, the document says, she ‘took the view
that [the] marriage was invalid as it did not take place in the UK’.
This
she vehemently denies: ‘What could be more outrageous than to claim I
knowingly married a man who was married to someone else a fortnight
earlier? I’m a Christian and I’ve got strong principles: it’s just a
blatant lie. I do not believe he married this woman until much later –
after I left him last year.’
Ali’s document led him to be charged with bigamy, and last week, he was sentenced at Torquay magistrates’ court.
He
was given a three-month suspended jail term and ordered to do 120
hours’ community service – meaning he walked free from court.
Meanwhile,
police and domestic violence support agencies have deemed that Laura,
29, is at ‘very high risk’ of further violence.
Somehow, living alone with her daughter, now almost three, far from her Devon home, she is trying to lead a normal life.
Against the odds, she is succeeding.
In person, Laura comes across as confident and professional – one would never guess what she has been through.
As
the founder and CEO of Think Media, a web design and advertising firm,
she has reached the semi-finals of the ‘working women’s Oscars’, the
NatWest Venus awards, for which she has been nominated as Business
Mother of the Year.
Yet
she mentions this casually: important as her business is to her, it
comes second. ‘Nothing means more to me than my daughter,’ she says.
‘I’ll do whatever it takes to protect her. Despite everything, she’s
happy.’
Determined
no one else should have to face a similar ordeal, Laura is also about
to launch Are They Safe?, a new service that will provide comprehensive
background checks on prospective partners for a fee of £195.
Survivor: Laura Lyons, who endured repeated abuse at the hands of her husband, Farouk Ali
‘If I’d known what I was getting into with Farouk, things would have been very different,’ she says.
‘Are
They Safe? will tell you whether the man or woman that you’re thinking
of taking into your life is really the person they say they are; whether
they have a record of violence, their financial history – and of
course, whether they’re married. ‘A lot of people meet over the
internet, where anyone can build a fantasy life. That makes this service
even more necessary.’
Like most abusive relationships, Laura’s involvement with Ali, who is ten years older, began very differently.
They
met through her first job, selling advertising for a Devon media group,
when she visited his successful restaurant, Naz, in Newton Abbot. He
recently sold the restaurant, although he still owns the building. ‘He
seemed pleasant enough,’ she said. ‘We were friendly, nothing more.’
In
her early 20s, she moved to London, where she worked for IPC Media. But
in the summer of 2009, she went through a ‘bad patch’ and returned to
Devon, where her parents live, for a break.
Ali
– then recently divorced from his third wife – appeared sympathetic and
understanding. ‘He seemed like my knight in shining armour, the man I’d
always dreamed I would meet,’ Laura says.
‘In
hindsight, I was so naïve. He asked me to move back to Devon. Within a
few weeks, I’d moved into his house. I left IPC and set up Think Media.’
Soon
enough, there were warning signals. Laura said that after a few months,
when she and Ali were first engaged, his former wife, Afiara, phoned
her: ‘She told me not to marry him, because he was bound to get violent
with me, as he had done with her.’
Of
course, she disregarded this – unaware he had two convictions for
assaults. Later, the father of a Devon woman whom Ali dated told her the
pair had split after Ali assaulted her so badly she was unable to go
out for two weeks.
Laura’s
mother, Jane, says: ‘He was always charming and plausible. But I
watched as little by little, he reduced my daughter, a confident
businesswoman, to a nervous wreck. If I phoned her, he would make her
put the conversation on speaker, so he could listen in. If she went out
without his permission, he’d lock the door so she couldn’t get back in.
He wanted to control her totally.’
Weeks
after their engagement, Ali attacked her in a local pub, Laura reveals:
‘An old male friend tried to give me a hug. Farouk threw a glass at me,
then punched me in the face. That was it. I moved out of the house.’
Ali was found guilty of bigamy and was
handed a three-month suspended sentence at Torquay magistrates’ court.
He was also ordered to do 120 hours’ community service
Then,
however, the charm offensive began. ‘He called and called, day after
day, begging my forgiveness, promising he’d never do anything like this
again.
‘It
was almost as if I’d got involved with a cult. I was blinded. He
explained that, due to his cultural views, we had to get married because
he was living in sin, which is why he had been acting the way he had. I
gave in, wanting to believe this to be the truth.’ They married on
October 6, 2010.
Laura
says that, shortly before the wedding, Ali made a trip to Bangladesh,
where he had many relatives: ‘He was in touch every day, telling me how
much he loved me and that he couldn’t wait for our wedding.’ Did he say
anything about getting married to someone else while he was away?
‘Of
course he didn’t!’ she says ‘And all the time we were together, he was
never in touch with any “wife” in Bangladesh.’ Once they were married,
Ali’s controlling behaviour grew worse.
Twice
he forced Laura to take lie detector tests because of his intense
jealousy. Although she passed both times, it made no difference.
He
began to assault her frequently: ‘Sometimes it was twice a week – and
not just a slap. He used to say they were djinns [evil spirits] in him,
that made him violent. People say they could see the fear in my eyes.’
Even
when she became pregnant, the violence did not stop. ‘One time when I
was expecting, he threw a vase at my head, then a chair at my stomach. A
builder who was working outside called the police, but he wasn’t
charged.’
The
most dramatic incident came when Ali attacked her as she was on the
phone to her bank. The clerk she was talking to became so alarmed she
broke off the call to dial 999.
The
Mail on Sunday has seen a letter about Laura from Splitz, a domestic
violence victims’ agency which works with Devon and Cornwall police.
It
states that because of ‘ongoing domestic abuse issues with her husband
Farouk’, she is ‘considered [to be at] very high risk of further
violence and abuse’. It adds that her case was discussed with officers
at the local multi agency risk assessment conference (Marac) at least
eight times.
A
second letter from the police confirms this, saying she was classed as a
‘high risk victim’, and that Marac had tried to set up plans ‘to
protect her from a risk of harm by the perpetrator’ six times between
February 2011 and April 2013.
Meanwhile,
Farouk had other difficulties. On 27 October 2010, three weeks after
marrying Laura, Naseem Ahmed, his business partner, was almost beaten to
death when he was ambushed as he got out of his car, sustaining
horrific injuries.
Two men, Roger Khan and Abul Ali, were charged with attempted murder, and eventually convicted and jailed.
But
at the trial, Farouk Ali’s brother Miraz gave evidence that Farouk had
threatened to ‘put a hit on this guy’ after hearing unproven allegations
that Naseem had sexually abused one of their sisters. Miraz said Farouk
also forced Naseem to take a lie detector test. Farouk Ali denies the
claims.
The pair met at Naz Indian restaurant
in Newton Abbot, Devon, which Ali owned at the time. New owners have
since taken over the restaurant
For
Laura, the final straw came in April 2013, when he dropped her down the
stairwell of their home in front of their 18-month-old daughter. She
was knocked unconscious for several minutes.
‘He
came down the stairs and as I came to, he was trying to position my
body so it looked as if I’d jumped,’ she says. ‘He wasn’t even trying to
check whether I was OK. That’s when I thought: “If I don’t get out, I’m
going to end up dead”.’
A
few weeks later, having made careful plans, she fled. She stayed first
in Devon, at an address she kept secret from him. But, after discovering
the location, Ali followed her in his car, provoking a confrontation
outside her new home. Soon afterwards, in October last year, he left the
country for Bangladesh, where he stayed until May.
Documents
seen by this newspaper confirm that, while he was away, the police
advised Laura to change the names of herself and her daughter, and to go
undercover – as if she were in the witness protection programme.
Determined to maintain her identity, Laura has kept her name, but moved
to a distant city.
During
this time, their divorce was going through. Ali’s claim about his
‘prior Bangladeshi marriage’ first came in a letter in February. His
lawyers followed it up at a Family Court hearing three weeks ago, when
they offered to pay Laura’s costs and negotiate a settlement if she
accepted an annulment.
She
refused. Part of the reason was that this newspaper had interviewed
another of Ali’s close family members, whose name we have decided not to
disclose. This individual insisted he only married the Bangladeshi
woman after Laura left him – and had lied about the date in an attempt
to protect his assets.
At
the Family Court hearing, Laura’s lawyers suggested the photocopy of
the Bangladeshi marriage certificate Ali produced may have been a
forgery.
The
judge agreed, and made a highly unusual order: that before the case go
any further, independent investigators must conduct an inquiry to
establish the truth in Bangladesh. This will take place shortly.
But
when Ali appeared in the magistrates’ court to answer his bigamy
charge, he made another extraordinary claim: he only married Laura in
2010 because she was pregnant. This, she insists, is also a lie: ‘I
didn’t fall pregnant for over a year. You only have to look at my
daughter’s birth certificate. I assure you, I was not pregnant in 2010.’
Last
night, the police and Crown Prosecution Service were unable to explain
why the bigamy case had gone ahead when another part of the legal
system, the Family Court, had heard evidence its basis might be false,
and have ordered an inquiry.
A CPS spokesman said: ‘All I can say is that we were aware of divorce proceedings in the Family Court.’
Meanwhile
Laura’s ordeal is set to be raised in Parliament, as part of a campaign
to change the law to make ‘coercive control’ a criminal offence, and to
let the CPS consider the whole history of a relationship when deciding
whether to charge perpetrators of domestic violence.
Harry
Fletcher, the veteran criminal justice expert who is leading the
campaign, said: ‘Laura’s experience is all too typical. She endured a
long period of coercive behaviour and violence, but when she did find
the courage to go to the police, the limits of the law allowed the
perpetrator to get away with it.’
Are They Safe? will be run in partnership with personal protection firm Priavo Security, whose offices are in Central London.
Commercial
director Celine Murphy said: ‘When I hear about cases like Laura’s, I
feel very strongly that if we can help men or women in a similar
position, and deter would-be perpetrators, that can only be a good
thing.’
‘I’m
strong enough to come through this,’ Laura says. ‘But it’s clear I
could be still at risk. I’ve got my own safety plan. But the system
needs to change so that men like him are brought to justice.’
Last night, Ali refused to comment.
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK
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