It bears all
the signs of a wonderfully romantic wedding – a proud groom, a beaming
bride in figure-hugging white lace gown, and an idyllic setting on a
sun-drenched beach. Vows were exchanged beneath a white gazebo as proud
friends and family, including the groom’s elderly mother, gathered
around.
Yvonne
Gibney knows all about this touching ceremony in the Gulf state of Oman
because she has the pictures – lots of them, and impressive they are,
too. It seems no expense was spared.
But
when she first saw the images on her computer screen at home in the
Wirral, thousands of miles away from this glamorous beachside party,
Yvonne’s throat tightened, her mouth went dry and her hands began to
shake.
BETRAYED: Yvonne with her wedding album, she says Gibney has never said 'sorry - he's cold and narcissistic'
Because
she knew that the man in the photographs exchanging looks of what seems
to be pure adoration was already married. To her.
Indeed,
the pictures came as shocking proof that 49-year-old Maurice, the man
she called her husband, had woven an extraordinary web of lies,
deceiving not only his wife of 17 years, but lying to his son and duping
his own family into taking part in what she now describes as a
‘pantomime’.
Last
week, Maurice Gibney was convicted as a bigamist by a court in the
Wirral and given a six-month suspended sentence. But it came as cold
comfort to a woman who, for a while at least, was left an emotional
wreck by his behaviour.
Yvonne,
a 55-year-old senior nurse-practitioner, she is devastated not just at
the betrayal, but at the extent of the cold-hearted deception which
forced her to turn detective in an attempt to get behind his lies. And
she is disappointed he was not put in prison for the damage he has
caused, not least to their son, 16-year-old Sebastian, and to her older
child from a previous marriage, Joshua, who grew up with Gibney.
It
hardly helped Yvonne’s mood to learn that her ex-husband (the two are
now divorced), who earns £85,000 tax-free as an oil contractor in Oman,
lavished a jaw-dropping £45,000 on his wedding ceremony.
Yvonne,
meanwhile, was left in the North West dealing with an endless stream of
patients at the GP surgery where she works. ‘I had wanted him to be
jailed because he broke the law and deserved to be punished. He has made
me look like a trusting fool,’ she says.
‘He
has never once apologised or shown any remorse or contrition. He has
never asked after the children or tried to contact them.
DOUBLE LIFE: Gibney and Suzanne Prudhoe at their wedding in the Gulf state of Oman in 2013
‘But
I also wanted people to know the truth about his crimes against the
moral values and expectations of marriage and parenthood. Time in jail
would have forced him to face what he did and recognise the trail of
devastation he has wreaked on people he’s supposed to love.
‘Maurice
is cruel, cold and narcissistic. He convinced me he was depressed, made
excuses not to visit his son, claimed he was broke and having problems
at work – and all the while he was already engaged to another woman.’
That
‘other’ woman was 46-year-old Suzanne Prudhoe, a teacher, who probably
met Maurice in Oman, according to Yvonne, around November 2011. The
couple married in March last year.
‘Seeing him in court was horribly traumatic,’ Yvonne says. ‘There was no sign of the warm compassionate man I once knew.’
Certainly,
her former spouse’s duplicity has taken a toll on her health. There are
bags under her eyes and she faces a £20,000 legal bill for her divorce.
‘I
wonder how Suzanne feels now, knowing that from the moment they met
their relationship was a lie and that her marriage was a sham, based on
broken vows,’ says Yvonne.
It
was in February this year that Yvonne finally discovered the pictures
of her husband on the Facebook site – and the final pieces of the jigsaw
of deceit she had been assembling now fell into place. Yet she is still
grappling with questions about how it went wrong. On the face of it,
theirs seemed a good partnership.
In
1995, Yvonne accepted a posting as nursing officer the British High
Commission in Lagos, Nigeria. By coincidence, Maurice arrived in the
bustling West African city the very same week to work for an Italian
construction company. They met at the Canadian Embassy club, a social
hub for Western expats on a Friday nights. It was, says Yvonne, ‘love at
first sight’, and after a whirlwind courtship of just 11 weeks, they
were married. At 35 and already mother to a young son, Yvonne believed
Maurice was perfect. ‘He was fun to be with, he was attractive. I felt
very comfortable with him. I was head over heels in love.’ He was also
very good with her son, Joshua. They were married by torchlight in a
castle in Scotland. ‘It was very romantic,’ Yvonne says. ‘We stopped in
London to tell my family, who were a little anxious at first, but were
quickly reassured by Maurice, who said that he only wanted to make me
happy.’
PAPER WORK: Gibney's wedding certificate to Prudhoe which lists him as being divorced
And,
by her account, the first few years of the marriage were great and life
in Lagos was good. They lived in a huge, colonial-style house, complete
with servants and a nanny. They enjoyed luxury holidays to Cape Town,
Mauritius and Kenya. Maurice’s daughter from an earlier relationship
usually joined them.
In
2001, three years after the couple’s son Sebastian was born, the family
bought a house on the Wirral. But within a year they returned to work
in a different part of Nigeria until 2006, when Yvonne and the boys
returned to Britain for Joshua’s GCSE exams.
Maurice
continued to work abroad – in Nigeria, Japan, France and Norway –
flying home whenever he could. Yvonne had no cause to question his
fidelity. ‘We were used to spending time apart. It suited us. We’re both
pretty independent people and I trusted him.’
Things
started to change, however, after her husband took the job in Oman in
July 2011. Initially, Maurice would return home regularly, and Yvonne
went out there in the August to celebrate their 16th wedding
anniversary. ‘He was working most of the time but I was happy on the
beach and looking around the souks. We went for dinners and he bought me
a beautiful diamante Islamic veil as a gift.’
But
when she and Sebastian flew out for Christmas that year, Maurice
disappeared unexpectedly ‘to work in the desert’, only returning late on
December 27. Little did Yvonne know that he had actually flown 3,700
miles back to the UK to spend the festive season with Suzanne and her
family in Stourbridge, Worcestershire.
PRESENTS: Gibney and Prudhoe's wedding gift tags; the couple married in March last year
For
unbeknown to Yvonne, her husband had already embarked on his double
life. ‘He systematically lied and lied. He tried to manipulate me by
pretending to be depressed, and suggested that if we got divorced but
remained together he would be a ‘‘better father and a better husband’’,’
she says.
‘With hindsight I now know they had got engaged a month earlier.’
Yvonne’s
first inkling that ‘something was not quite right’ was when she saw a
picture of his eldest’s sister Sheila on Facebook, wearing a fascinator
while on holiday in 2013 in Muscat, the capital of Oman.
‘I
had no idea she had visited him. It made me start searching the pages
of other family members and found several of them had been in there at
the same time. All dressed for a wedding. I had a gut feeling, but it
seemed so crazy I dismissed it.’
When
she tackled Maurice, he denied they had ever visited. But Yvonne could
not shake the feeling that he was up to something. Indeed, he had failed
to come home the previous Christmas, in 2012, blaming his depression
and volatile mood. ‘When he eventually came home in January, we had a
huge row and he stormed off in his hired car. I became worried after not
hearing from him for two days and called the car company. They let slip
that he had used them a month earlier, at Christmas, but the address he
gave did not make any sense to me.
JUSTICE: Yvonne leaves Wirral magistrates court, where Gibney pleaded guilty to bigamy last week
‘I later discovered that it was the home of Michelle Mann, Suzanne’s sister.’
Yvonne
was convinced her husband was having an affair, but after checking
internet sites she concluded that Michelle was living with her husband
Philip.
By
now Yvonne had started divorce proceedings, and during the process
uncovered that Maurice had submitted doctored bank statements to a
solicitor. ‘He was trying to conceal the hotel and restaurant bills for
his secret trips back to the UK with Suzanne,’ she says. ‘What he didn’t
know was that I already had some of the original statements, which had
been sent to the house. The Stourbridge connection kept popping up.
‘I
went back though all our emails and began to notice discrepancies in
the times they were sent. I went to the local computer shop and the
owner taught me how to track IP addresses which gives you the location a
message has been sent from.’
Armed
with this knowledge, Yvonne worked out that not only had he been
slipping in and out of Britain, but he had also been on holiday to India
and South Africa with Suzanne, all while pretending to be in Oman. ‘I
could see that he had made three trips back to the UK that I didn’t know
about. I couldn’t believe how he lied to us. How could he have called
us pretending to be in Oman when he was here?
‘Once
I could hear the sea over the phone – he must have been at his sister’s
house in Crosby, Merseyside, celebrating Christmas. He also visited his
brother and mum in Liverpool because I could track him from his cash
machine transactions.
‘In
July 2012, he arrived two days after my birthday, and yet he sent me an
iPad and a huge bouquet of white lilies and a note which said, “I’m so
sorry I can’t be with you on your birthday, yet another birthday apart. I
promise I will make up for it soon, I love you so much.”’
LAVISH: Gibney who earns £85,000 tax-free as an oil contractor in Oman, spent £45,000 on the wedding
As
it got closer to the final stages of the divorce in 2013, Yvonne still
had a niggling sense there was more to be revealed. Pretending to be
from the car hire company, she phoned the house in Stourbridge and
during the conversation, Philip Mann announced that he was Maurice’s
brother-in-law.
Later
that day, she called back and spoke to Michelle. ‘I told her the hire
company had been in touch and I needed to understand why some man had
said he was Maurice’s brother-in-law. She told me, “Because he’s married
to my sister.” ’
Holding
her face in her hands Yvonne exhales loudly. ‘I can’t tell you how many
times I have relived that conversation – especially in the middle of
the night. It makes me feel a deep, searing sense of betrayal.’
Suddenly,
the image of the fascinator flashed though through Yvonne’s mind. ‘Had
he actually gone and committed bigamy? It was too unbelievable. I went
to my mother-in-law’s to ask her what she knew,’ says Yvonne. ‘But she
said she didn’t know what I was talking about.’
Yvonne
now had to find out the identity of Michelle’s sister, and when her
Facebook page popped on screen, there was Maurice, holding her tightly
around the waist, in a wedding photograph.
Other
pictures garnered from the site of an Oman-based photographer provided
further hurtful truth. Her worst fears had become a reality.
But she was still left with one outstanding question: ‘Why on earth didn’t he just divorce me?’
In
the end, on the advice of her legal team, Yvonne reported the crime to
Merseyside CID. ‘While I find it humiliating that my personal life has
been exposed in this, it was important for me get the story out.’
Ironically,
it is the internet that has been the means for revenge. It is, she
says, the only potent weapon she has left. ‘The story has gone viral.
I’ve had people get in contact me from all over the world, some who
don’t even know me. At least he’s been publicly shamed and everyone now
knows what kind of heartless person he really is.’
No comments:
Post a Comment