A man has been cleared of waging a campaign of domestic abuse and sexual violence on his wife, who went on to take her own life.<\/p>\n
Christopher Trybus, 43, was charged with manslaughter, as well as with two counts of rape and coercive and controlling behaviour, but was found not guilty after a seven-week trial at Winchester crown court.<\/p>\n
The jury acquitted Trybus on all charges after deliberating for 40 hours and eight minutes.<\/p>\n
Tarryn Baird, 34, was found dead at her home in Swindon, Wiltshire, on 28 November 2017. The couple, who met at school, had moved to the UK from their native South Africa in 2007 and married two years later.<\/p>\n
The rapes were alleged to have taken place in 2016, and the coercive control charges included allegations that Trybus, a software consultant and developer, tracked and monitored his wife. He was also accused of limiting her access to finances, isolating her from her family, and threatening to reveal private information about her to them.<\/p>\n
Tom Little KC, prosecuting, said during the trial: \u201cIt was the control and physical violence meted out to her, including sexual violence and the threat of and fear of physical and sexual violence on his part towards her,\u201d that caused Baird to take her own life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baird made more than 100 visits to her GP, the court heard, where she reported she had been raped, and displayed bruising, which she said had been caused by beatings.<\/p>\n
She made attempts to leave her husband and move to a women\u2019s refuge, the court heard, but said she feared it was more dangerous to leave than it was to stay.<\/p>\n
Baird left a note to her family that read: \u201cI am so sorry but I just couldn\u2019t take it any more. I know you may not understand this but I just can\u2019t explain the dark cloud that is over me.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease don\u2019t let this break you, but know I am now free. Nothing any of you could have done could have changed this, please just know that. I love you and please forgive me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trybus\u2019s barrister, Katy Thorne KC, told the court that Baird\u2019s injuries were self-inflicted and said Trybus \u201cloved her and cherished her deeply\u201d and \u201cthat without anyone\u2019s knowledge, Tarryn Baird was making demonstrably false allegations to health professionals\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are injuries but the defence case is that on a number of occasions Tarryn Baird made allegations of violence which were demonstrably false, for example by reporting injuries to health professionals when Christopher Trybus was not even in the country,\u201d she told the court.<\/p>\n
Baird, who lived with PTSD from witnessing violent incidents in South Africa, took several prescription drug overdoses in the months leading up to her death.<\/p>\n
Thorne suggested Baird had been \u201cdesperately seeking help\u201d for her mental health issues, \u201cand feeling she wasn\u2019t receiving it and she may have become addicted to the attention that her allegations brought\u201d.<\/p>\n
In her closing speech, Thorne said Trybus had been \u201cunfairly accused\u201d and asked \u201chow he was supposed to answer the allegations of a ghost from 10 years ago\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said the prosecution\u2019s case was \u201cbased on an agenda that when women allege violence and domestic abuse, they must be telling the truth\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been cleared of waging a campaign of domestic abuse and sexual violence on his wife,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-545402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}