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Tears of canoe man's wife
Paul Cheston, Courts Correspondent17 Jul 2008
The wife of back-from-the-dead canoeist John Darwin today told a jury how she wished he had drowned.
Anne Darwin broke down in tears as she described how her husband had forced her into taking part in a £250,000 insurance fraud.
She said she had reluctantly followed his instructions for five years but secretly wished he had actually died at sea.
Mrs Darwin, 56, said she was so much in thrall to her husband she could never leave, even when he had an affair. The former doctor's receptionist said she felt intellectually inferior because he was a teacher.
She entered the witness box today at Teesside crown court claiming she was innocent of the massive fraud because of "marital coercion".
Her sons Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29, who had spoken earlier this week of being betrayed by their mother, watched from the public gallery.
Mrs Darwin painted a picture of a domineering husband who was determined to get his own way both before and after he faked his disappearance in a canoeing accident six years ago. She described the strain of lying to her family and applying for insurance money on a man who was alive and well.
"I ran out of the house and I crossed the road to the sea and I sat on the beach looking at the sea," she said. "I wished John had drowned at sea.
"I considered walking into the sea. I got so desperate but I couldn't do it because of the effect it would have on the rest of the family, particularly Mark and Anthony, and I didn't have the courage so I calmed myself down and went back."
She began her evidence by explaining how she and her husband had been teenage sweethearts but their marriage had been rocked by his affair.
"I was quite obviously upset," she said. "I did consider leaving him, but I just couldn't see a life without him. I didn't know how I would cope on my own so I forgave him."
Asked by her barrister David Waters QC: "Did you still love him?"
She replied in almost a whisper with the simple word: "Yes."
She had been a virgin when she married and remained sexually faithful to him ever since, she said.
She told the jury that she never felt capable of challenging her husband's authority even when she knew what he was doing was wrong.
"If there was something he wanted me to do, he would ask me initially to do it and, if I didn't do it, he would just go on and on at me until I did," she said. "Superficially we would discuss things because my thoughts never seemed to carry any weight. He would not shout. He was a very quiet man. The more angry he became, the quieter he got.
"I suppose it was his teacher training and he learned how to control disruptive pupils, obviously, and that is how he pretty much made me feel, like a second-year pupil in one of his classes."
After the birth of their children Darwin had become more secretive, playing internet games and planning get rich quick schemes.
Mrs Darwin said that in March 2002 the couple's debts were so large her husband realised he was worth more dead than alive.
She begged him not to stage the fake disappearing act but he insisted.
After he did so, she collected him from the beach and took him to Durham station and he went to live in the Lake District.
Returning home, she rang the police to report him missing telling them she thought "he had gone out in his canoe and not come back".
"Yes, it was a pack of lies but, as I said, John had told me to do it," she told the jury. "I was anxious. I was upset. I suppose I didn't fully consider the consequences. John had left me in a very difficult situation." Asked about playing the con trick on her two sons, she replied: "I said to John we should tell them because they were grieving. I could see how hurt they were and I was hurt for the fact that I was creating this deception.
"I honestly felt like a grieving widow. I had lost my husband, not in the sense he was lost, but he had left me. I felt desperate, I felt ashamed about what was happening. The emotions I showed were genuine."
But Darwin was unable to settle in the North-West and wanted to return to the family home in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool.
So, Mrs Darwin said, she drove to the Whitehaven area to pick him up and bring him back to live in a bedsit the family owned next door and which could be accessed through a connecting door. She said she did not recognise him at first because he had grown a beard, was wearing different clothes, had a limp and was using a walking stick.
She told the jury: "Yes, I was pleased to see him. But I was also very angry for the fact I had been put in that position. I said to him 'now is the time to put an end to this. We have got to stop it'. He said, 'we can't because we have come this far'.
"I wanted him to give himself up now and say he was alive and well.
"He said we couldn't. The worst was over. He said he was coming back and would help me get things sorted. I always looked to John to sort things."
Mrs Darwin said her husband told her to start making insurance claims and she agreed.
She was asked why she did not say no and she replied: "Because I couldn't go against John. "
Mr Waters asked whether she should just have left him and walked away from their marriage. She replied: "I would not be able to live on my own."
Later, Mr Waters asked Mrs Darwin if she still loved her husband.
She replied: "Not at this moment in time, no."
Mrs Darwin denies deception and money laundering.
The case continues.
