My wife abused me & would scream for help playing victim but I got her jailed after cops saw horrific nanny cam footage
Richard Spencer ended up £45,000 in debt due to his wife's controlling behaviour
TO the unwitting outside world, Richard and Sheree Spencer looked like they had the perfect life.
Three beautiful daughters, a seven-bedroom home in a leafy village near York and a Jaguar parked on the drive.
But behind closed doors, Richard, 47, had been secretly suffering from what a judge would later describe as “the worst case of controlling and coercive behaviour” she had ever seen.
During her 20-year reign of terror, sadistic Sheree, 46, repeatedly threatened to go to police claiming her helpless husband was abusing her — and would even scream for help to trick neighbours into believing that was the case.
She was only jailed after a shocked friend of Richard’s saw some nanny cam footage and sent it to the police.
Now, the shocking videos — which includes Sheree holding a carving knife to her husband’s throat — has been made public as Richard relives his ordeal in Channel 5 documentary My Wife, My Abuser: The Secret Footage, which airs on Monday.
In total, police received 36 video clips, nine phone audio recordings and 43 pictures of injuries as evidence.
In an exclusive chat with The Sun, Richard says: “Watching the footage, I’ve become emotionally detached from it.
“I can see it’s me and I can see the children in the background.
STAB HIM WITH FORKS
“But I feel I’m watching something about someone else.
“I felt so trapped for lots of reasons. If it had not been for my friend, I’m not sure what would have happened.”
The couple met at a nightclub in 2000 before marrying nine years later in the Phi Phi Islands in Thailand.
They bought the nanny cam — like the one seen in Netflix hit Fool Me Once, starring Michelle Keegan — shortly after Sheree, a senior project manager for HM Prison and Probation Service, gave birth to their eldest daughter in 2015.
Richard, who worked at BT in network design, explains: “We had two — 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.”
He says that after his eldest child’s first birthday he started secretly saving the footage of his abuse as “insurance” due to the fear he would be cut off from seeing his beloved kids.
The attacks began just a few months into the couple’s relationship.
Richard recalls: “It started with pushing, shoving and slapping, but she would say all couples have arguments.”
Over the years, it got worse. Sheree would stab him with forks, spit on him and lock him out.
During one attack she beat him with a wine bottle so hard that it permanently disfigured his left ear.
He says his wife also controlled him financially, adding: “Sheree wanted to go on nice holidays, so I had to take out loans.
“She manipulated me to take them out in my name. We were living beyond our means.”
He racked up £45,000 in debt and she would often not contribute to bills as an act of “punishment”.
Minor things caused her to fly into a rage.
In one video, she punches a defenceless Richard on the sofa in the playroom because he had not made dinner, barking at him: “Get in there and put the f***ing chicken in, you fat c***. Go on, you f***er. You lazy b*****d.”
Richard reveals he started to notice a pattern to the abuse.
He says: “There would be a tension-building phase, brought on by something she wasn’t happy about.”
At 5ft 10in, Richard says he was “physically much bigger and stronger” than 5ft 5in Sheree. But he reveals that if he tried to restrain her, the abuse would be “ten times worse”.
Richard says: “The way I’d deal with the physical abuse would be to curl into the foetal position and put my hands in front of my face because I needed to take the children to school without people looking at me.
“If I tried to restrain her, she’d get angry and what came next would be ten times worse.”
Richard also used make-up to try to cover up his injuries.
One of Sheree’s ways of exerting control was to threaten to go to the police and accuse Richard of abuse.
He says she would also threaten to smash her face into the bathroom mirror and send pictures to a friend.
Richard recalls: “She’d often open the window, lean out and shout, ‘No Richard, stop, you’re hurting me’, so the neighbours could hear.”
Richard’s case is unusual, because while both men and women suffer domestic violence, women are considerably more likely to be the victims at the hands of men.
TWIST THE TRUTH
One in four women experience domestic violence in their lifetime.
The truth only came out after Sheree contacted one of Richard’s friends, claiming he was drunk and she feared he might do something.
Concerned, the friend raced over.
While alone with Richard, he asked how he had got the bruise on his face — and then Richard came clean.
He showed him one of the recordings he had saved and the friend was so horrified by what he saw, he sent it to the police.
Officers arrived to arrest Sheree in June 2021, and PC Adele Jenkinson admits in the documentary: “As we got to the door, I thought we’d gone to the wrong house.
“These videos couldn’t have come from a house like this.”
The documentary also features police body-cam footage. It shows Sheree looking dishevelled, in just a T-shirt and frilly pair of knickers.
After getting dressed, her main concern is being seen by the neighbours as she is put in the back of a police van.
She asks: “Quickly, can you shove me in before anyone sees me?”
At the police station, the body-cam footage shows her trying to flirt with the custody sergeant, asking him: “Are you married?”
The documentary also features Sheree being interviewed by police as she calmly and convincingly claims to officers that Richard has been abusive to her.
She continues to twist the truth when they show her a recording of her holding a knife.
As she watches it, initially without the audio, she claims she was so broken she was begging him to let her end her life.
But she looks defeated when the video is played again with the audio, clearly showing her to be lying.
Sheree was jailed for four years at Hull Crown Court in March last year after admitting controlling and coercive behaviour, along with three counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Judge Kate Rayfield told her that the abuse was: “The worst case of controlling and coercive behaviour I have seen.”
Richard decided to share his story and the footage to help raise awareness.
He says: “The reasons for making the documentary are hopefully to have a positive impact on other people who could be going through something similar.”
He has also been working with a charity called ManKind Initiative, which supports male victims of domestic abuse.
And Richard has now found love again. He says: “I’m lucky to have met a new partner.
“She is the complete opposite of Sheree in every way possible.
“She couldn’t be any more understanding.
“What I thought were feelings of love and being in love before, I now know that wasn’t love.”
- My Wife, My Abuser: The Secret Footage is on Channel 5 on Monday at 10pm. For more on the ManKind Initiative, go to mankind.org.uk.