'Our mother lied for years'

Mark Darwin, 32, described his fury when he saw a photograph of his parents smiling together in Panama years after his father was supposed to be dead.

He told Teesside crown court his "world had been crushed" when he was told his father had gone missing on a canoe trip off the Hartlepool coast in March 2002.

After seeing the photo taken in Central America on the internet "I couldn't believe the fact she knew he was alive all this time and I had been lied to for God knows how long".

His brother Anthony, 29, told the court that he, too, felt betrayed when he saw the photo.

Anne Darwin, 56, denies six counts of fraud and nine counts of money laundering. She dabbed her eyes in the dock and blew her nose as Mark gave evidence against her.

The jury was told that Anthony was going to propose to his fiancée, Louise, during a holiday to Canada when his father disappeared. He cut short the trip and visited his mother at their home in Seaton Carew, Cleveland, to find her "crying and shaking".

In the weeks that followed he searched the internet for any information about people missing at sea and contacted the missing persons register.

He said: "I knew the police would be doing these things but it was a way of me doing something."

When his father reappeared at a London police station in December last year, claiming he had suffered amnesia, Anthony felt "disbelief and anger", he told the court, because he originally thought it was someone pretending to be his father.

When he saw him in the station he felt "surprised, amazed, still almost disbelieving".

Then the 2004 photo of the couple together with an estate agent in Panama surfaced, but he told the court that he initially thought the picture had been doctored.

It was only the next day when he read a newspaper article with his mother's admission that the image was real that he finally believed it. Asked how he felt when he realised, Anthony scratched his head and replied: "Upset, betrayed, I don't know."

His older brother Mark was at a wedding in Balham when he was telephoned by police to say his father had walked into the station. He told the jury he had no idea his father was still alive until he met him there.

He said that he telephoned his mother, then living in Panama. He said: "I rambled for 10 minutes and explained my Dad had turned up and I am sat next to him. "She sounded really shocked that he had turned up after all these years."

Mark agreed with David Waters, QC, for the defence, that he had felt extreme trauma and anger towards his mother when the Panama photograph was published.

She denies the offences and has put forward an unusual defence of "marital coercion" - claiming her husband forced her to go along with his plan.

The court had earlier been told that Anne Darwin, a former doctor's receptionist, used "guile, convincing pretence, persistence and guts" to trick people into believing her husband had drowned and to pull off a £250,000 con.

Andrew Robertson, QC, for the prosecution, had said she was "actively engaged" in money laundering by setting up off-shore accounts in Jersey and Panama in a "totally equal criminal partnership" with her husband, having faked his death to claim money from insurance companies to save themselves from bankruptcy.

Mr Robertson added that she was "far from a shrinking violet", saying: "We have here a determined, resolute woman who was able to lie and deceive at length - literally at length.

"She was able to act out equally the emotions of a tragically bereaved widow and the emotions of a weak woman who was somehow bullied into telling lies for nigh on six years much, as she would have you believe, against her true nature."

John Darwin will be sentenced later having admitted seven charges of deception and one charge of making false statements to procure a passport. He has also pleaded not guilty to nine counts of converting criminal property which will be left on file.

Anne Darwin's case continues.