One month after his wife was jailed on domestic abuse charges, a British man came out in public for the first time about his ordeal and explained why he remained silent for so long.

“There’s a stigma of not wanting to tell your friends that a lady could do that to you,” Richard said on the TV show Good Morning Britain.

“There’s a different element in that I’m bigger and stronger and I could physically stop the violence by restraining her, but then at some point you’ve always got to let go and it would be worse.”

Richard secretly recorded videos of his wife’s abuse and took 43 images of his bruised face and presented them in court. Sheree Spencer has now been senteced to four years in prison.

His wife worked as a senior official in HM Prison and Probation Service and even boasted she was friends with Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

In tirades of abuse, both drunk and sober, Sheree would attack her husband verbally and physically. Many instances would leave Richard with bruises.

In one instance, she defecated on the floor and forced Richard to clean it up. This incident was recorded and presented in court as well.

Richard also said that in many instances of abuse, his wife would then open the window and shout ‘‘Richard, stop hitting me, you’re hurting me’’ to present an image that she was the one facing abuse.

In many cases, Richard would be forced into a foetal position as she hit him and would have to wear makeup when he went out of the house to hide his bruises.

However, Sheree would regulary apologise and leave notes abuot how much she loved her husband. He said later that she was using the violence as a coping mechanism.

“She could control what she was doing to me but not other things in her life.”

The abuse ended in 2021, when a welfare worker called the police.

In the trial, her lawyer observed that even though she had been subjecting her husband to abuse she manged to have an impeccable professional reputation.

“It is perhaps particularly ironic that one of the projects she had been working on has been dealing with the effects of custodial sentences on the family,” her lawyer said.

The lawyer also said that she suffered from depression and anxiety and had chosen to self-medicate by using alcohol.

The judge who sentenced her to prison said, ‘This is the worst case of controlling and coercive behaviour I have seen.’

She admitted to coercive and controlling behaviour and three counts of assault including physical harm. However, the law she was sentenced under was only passed in 2015 so her entire period of abuse was not punishable.