[name removed to protect abuser]

This is SW [abusers name and pictures removed - he claimed it harasses him and used the law against me]. He uses other names too, including, apparently, David Peters.

[picture removed]

He is the reason this site exists, and his hurtful behaviours will hopefully inspire changes in UK Law.

Background

I was sucked in to a relationship by SW -  a very dashing, very attentive, apparently very romantic man, who wined and dined me and mirrored my life in oh, so many ways. How much of that was real I don't know.  I have rarely met a more convincing liar.

SW, who I once believed I loved deeply, has turned out to be a very sick man (I now consider him to be a psychopath. I didn’t know that then. I know more now about psychopaths now than I ever wanted to. Maybe soon I'll find the energy to detail why I think that's the case. But whilst it's a considered opinion it's not a professional one. And I'm getting ahead of myself.)

We had a seven month relationship. He started off beguilingly witty and quick, a slow start to our relationship filled with constant attention - constant little messages and texts, and lots of laughter. The end of the relationship was mostly me being put on hold in a dead relationship with 'I do love you' and 'you're gorgeous' messages, whilst 'ghosting' me and lying about the reasons.

I knew from the start that something wasn’t right but was being made to feel bad about doubting him. (I believe the current term is 'gaslighting'.) My questioning of him felt needy. That's not me. I felt bad.

Eventually, tired of being made to feel shabby for doubting,  I hired a private detective - as it transpired, a week or so before the relationship ended anyway.

After a two week period where he claimed first to be in Canada offering navigation training to Disney Cruises , and was then apparently in Shrivenham on a training course for the Royal Navy Reserve, when he ghosted me with claims of scrappy wifi, he finally sent a cold, heartless little email suggesting that he didn't have time for the relationship.

I still at this point, despite my doubts, had some feelings for the man, but was relieved if the truth be known, and thanked him for the time we'd had together - the attentive gentleman he had pretended to be at first was everything I had wanted in a partner. I knew I was going to aspire to being treated properly in future by partners.

Bang!

It was too late to back out of the private investigation - they'd already started work. The results came back.

Between the detective and an online search through a dubious looking website, I found out he’d lied.

He wasn’t living where he said (in the mess at his current place of work on Royal Navy Reserve)  - and had sent me photos - but  was actually living with a woman near Fareham, a woman to whom he had previously claimed he was renting this property. The 'tenant' is, it later transpired,  his wife. And they certainly aren't separated.

In an effort to prevent others being sucked into a relationship with a married man looking for a little extra marital fun under false pretences as I was, I posted his pictures onto Facebook, publicly (my posts are usually friends only) with a note to the effect that he's married and living in Fareham (which is near where he lives, but I didn’t want people putting anything through his letterbox.

I risked the shame and humiliation from friends and family, admitting publicly that I'd been duped and had, albeit inadvertently, had an affair with  married man. To my mind there was a possibility of an angry girlfriend or wife being in touch (but that’s also a chance to explain and/or apologise).

You can't handle the truth!

How wrong can you be?

Hell broke loose. I don't want to relive it. Suffice to say, I had an email from someone who he had been duping at the same time as me. That hurt. And I was shocked.

Comments on the Facebook post by some of his victims (and my angry friends), revealing the extent of his duplicity and history of luring women (the term grooming has been used, lots) were reported to Facebook by him and removed. The post was also de-indexed in Google. Ironically, the post I'd put up to be found by future victims got taken down by the completely fair and understandable comments of his past ones, and by angry friends.

Bottom line: This isn't a married man who's slipped off the rails. SW is a man who serially lures women into bed with him - sexually grooms them - causing hurt and distress for his family and his targets. He has apparently, at time of writing (Summer 2018) been married for some 16 years. He had cheated on his previous two wives as well. And was at one point living with two women who knew nothing of each other for a period of two years. That's thirty years of persuading women into relationships under false pretences.

I was lured into hs sick web of lies with at least one other woman simultaneously.

There are so many gaps that I/we didn't believe there were just two of us.  This has proved to be the case. He really is the gift that keeps on giving, as people step forward. The worst thing is that I am unlikely to ever know why. There are more questions than answers. But I've had a VERY lucky escape.

This is far from just a married man who’s been tempted by forbidden fruit.. He is an incredibly sick and dangerous individual. And clever. I have, over the past moths, been scared for myself, for my children, for my family. Been sucked into all kinds of weirdness. Had my heart, my morals and my sanity jumped all over.

At one point it looked like going to the press might be my only protection (and I was offered a five figure sum to do so). But that would have hurt the people I wanted to protect.

Long and short - I can't to talk about the relationship or the person I thought I knew any more. I’m not going to formally give evidence, but am giving the police my correspondence etc as evidence for when he finally goes too far and seriously hurts someone physically as well as emotionally. His behaviour is risky and escalating from everything I can make out.

The aftermath

I’m backing off from ‘doing the right thing’, helping the police, which  - again - hurts. Lots. I’m selling myself out. My entire sense of self has crumpled. But it’s the right thing for those around me. I won't be pushing a rape case on the basis of some of the things he did to me. I've been left too emotionally fragile.

BUT even though (my MP ) John Redwood’s politics are as far from mine as is humanly possible, I suspect, he’s now looking at gaps in our laws. I salute him. I need something good to come out of this. Desperately.

I have learned a lot about liars (and not just Psycho [name removed]), about friendships, about family, about gaps in the law, and about myself. The whole sorry truth shifted the sands of my reality - everything I believed about myself, about the people around me, has changed.

I was mentally unsteadied by the whole thing.

There’s no more to be said to friends: this text was originally just the answers to the questions they were asking - and fairly, because it was plastered all over Facebook in humiliating ways I’d never imagined, a horrid, weird story that emerged as the people he's hurt crawled out of the woodwork.

I am damaged by him, I need to heal, not to dwell on his behaviour. It's going to be a while before the weddings and events we were due to attend together are been and gone. It's going to be a while until I stop my mind thinking 'S...' would love that', because the nice part of the 'S...' I thought I knew never actually existed. It's even going to be a while before I can face Paddington Bear because he joked frequently about 'that bloody bear', in the process stealing happy memories of reading these books to my children. The fabric of my life has shifted.

But I also don't want this to happen to anyone else.

This post is not intended to harass or damage SW in any way

I'd like to see him getting mental health support, but suspect this will never be a tied off end for me. The whole affair will remain a large open sore with the questions 'why?' and 'why me?' hung over it.

As I mentioned above, I considered going to the media, and had been offered a lot of money to do so. Having that public awareness would have offered me some safety from recriminations from him. He's a fearless risk taker - in the Navy he was not not only a diver but bomb disposal - a risk with an added helping of risk. I imagine he was brilliant at it  - he can feign emotion (our early conversations are heartbreaking to read), but I believe he has none.

I am aware of at least three assaults on young people. (Please note that there is no implication here that these were sexual assaults, all three were physical.) He frightens me. Alarm bells did ring over the course of our relationship. It's true when they say that love is blind.

My father is on borrowed time thanks to fibrosis in his lungs, something S. knew and still came to see him with me to reassure dad that I was in the safe hands of a lovely partner. That should give you an idea of how callous he is. This blog, for me, is the second best thing to the media coverage which both S's wife and my father have begged me not to pursue. I think enough hurt has been generated by the man's actions. I agreed to refrain, although his wife, a solicitor, has shown me no such compassion and is seeking damages via a harassment case.

Before I knew my family's views, I had told SW that if he apologised both to the victims I knew about and to his wife and family, and went to get some mental health help, I wouldn't go to the media. He sent me the coldest, most chilling voice message,  with a half apology at the start and end, a 'shit sandwich' of apologies to me and another of his victims at the start and finish, but with a huge filling of blame for me causing hurt to his family,  threats of legal action, and and gloating that the school at which he is a governor had taken his word over his behaviour.  (I didn't, incidentally,  contact any of his family, with the exception of his wife, who asked me to through another of his victims. His daughter contacted me.)

He said on that message that he's seeing a psychiatrist. He says a lot of things that aren't true to cover up for himself. I can't change him. But I may be able to give you fair warning before embarking on a relationship with him by posting this here as part of this campaign. (Slightly less useful now his name has been removed - sorry.)

There are plenty of women who are very happy with no strings attached relationships. Who  are seeking extra marital fun. Who just want physical comfort. S is not profiling those women when selecting his prey - he seems to target successful, self employed women with children, and who are looking for long term relationships.

And they are generally lovely women - I have personally conversed with several.

He lures them in - and brings them down. Hard.

But I have enough fight left in me to turn this negative experience into something good. This campaign is designed to make adult grooming illegal in the UK. To this end, it's getting fully behind Anna Rowe's petition to make 'catfishing', a specific form of grooming, illegal in the UK as an invaluable start point.

There is no suggestion here that S W has broken any laws by grooming women for sex. That's the point of the site. To make sure that future victims (of any adult sexual groomer) get the protection that his victims to date have been denied.

[Images removed to protect the abuser's right to privacy]

More about CAAGE campaigns: here