Pearl Was HORRIFIED By This Fact
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
142.58592
Summary
In this episode, I speak to a father whose son's best friend was murdered by his ex-wife, and who is now serving a life sentence for the murder of his son. We discuss the impact of group hysteria and how it can spiral out of control, and how to deal with it.
Transcript
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she like was convinced like i wonder do you think these she was convinced these were true
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yeah i think she she tricked herself into thinking they were true after a while she
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started believing her own lies there's no doubt i think she does this day that she had constructed
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this fantasy world where i was some sort of you know she she she was meeting um these kind of
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women's aid charities these group meetings in the local town that was known um other mothers in the
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area were actually part of this group um if you how do you because i was thinking could i go to a
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woman's aid place like would they can anyone just go to one any woman can yes yes i'm just curious
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what they would you know if like i said oh someone abused me they're not going to question you they're
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not going to they're not going to assume you're lying they're going to assume you're telling the
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truth they're then typically going to give you advice uh they're going to tell you what to say
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and how to present and it's going to be a game of top trumps right between you know you you all sat
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there and you'll say i you know my ex did that no my ex did something worse no my ex did something
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was and it just becomes this kind of echo chamber yeah that everything gets gets more and more
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okay so you found out that your son's best friend was murdered yeah i thought it was actually my son
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murdered at the time so i i phoned my ex-wife i sent text messages she refused to answer even then even at
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that point she just didn't want to engage at all and uh it was well into the next you know i phoned the
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police and asked is this my son fortunately well you know it sounds dreadful to say that now but
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the relief was it wasn't him i only i only really heard anything from my ex-wife well into the next day
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well why why can't you just let it go something something truly terrible has happened it transpired
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that my ex-wife was very close friends with leslie speed and that her and my son and leslie archie
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would frequently go out playing and they'd been out the day before
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so i believe my ex-wife was the last person to see archie alive and
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clearly within this group and i like you know i later found out from from matthew spriggs
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that's you know i don't speak for matthew spriggs by the way the father of archie but you know he'd
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experienced much the same as i had that there were groups of women throwing hurling abuse at him
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unnecessary abuse really vile you know mobile phones out taking photographs you know films of him
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picking the sun up dropping the sun back shouting and swearing at him with the children and my son
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included so this is my ex amongst this group of women throwing hurling abuse at him
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you know this this is this is days before leslie speed did what she did so she smothered and strangled him
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and it transpires it seems that this was there were two reasons really that that it was a way to
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prevent archie ever being looked after by matthew and it was also an act of revenge against matthew and
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the similarities of the kind of allegation she was making against him mirrored almost exactly the
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allegations my ex was making against me these are two women maybe a third with emily s you know saying
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and doing the same things and following a very similar a similar pattern a similar very similar pattern
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and i you know before this the point is before his murder before this murder i picked up on this
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and i'd warned um kafkas at the local authority social services were not involved at this point i
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should add but i had stated very clearly that i was very concerned by this group of women that their
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behavior was becoming kind of a group hysteria and that something needs to be done so some of them
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needed to look into this behavior because it's getting spiraling out of control and my fear was
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something was going something would snap something was going to happen i had no idea it was going to be
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that serious or anything like that and i'm certainly not accusing my ex-wife of any culpability in this
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you know she's not responsible we know who's responsible but this kind of group think amongst
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this group of women it's a dangerous thing it can have real consequences
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and it can have the most terrible consequences and perhaps rather than encouraging women like leslie
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speed who was had known kind of homicidal tendencies probably not known to my ex-wife admittedly but
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surely it is better to try to diffuse these situations it's better to say look leslie let's just calm
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down let's try and do the best we can for our children let's let's not throw these wild allegations
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around but by hyping everything up by making everything more and more extreme then some people
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will snap and she certainly did why why did she strangle her son she did it because she didn't want the
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dad like what so she strangled her did she say that or how did there is evidence
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evidence in the murder trial that seems to suggest that she'd written a letter um that explained that
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you know that it seemed to be an act of revenge against him wow and that um
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at least you know i'm sorry i forget the exact wording and i would kind of need to get that right
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so i don't want to go into too many details on that but it was an act of revenge
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against the father okay and she was making all of the same allegations against him as my ex was making
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against me they were a very tight-knit group of mothers the children were all very close friends
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there were links that i had seen i become very concerned but of course
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whenever i raised my concerns well mr jones you're not allowed to say who your ex-wife can and can't
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be friends with that's coercive control you're controlling your ex-wife i said
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look my ex-wife can make whatever friends she likes but when when they become involved with my son
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and these are women are kind of babysitting my son influencing my son then i have surely have a
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right to become concerned and i can't help but think that my concerns were completely and utterly justified
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by what happened that i was making these noises before this or anything happened and it seemed that
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matthew spriggs was independent i didn't know the man really i'd only met him once but i later found out
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he was making these noises as well that he was complaining against obviously his ex-partner leslie
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speed but he was noticing the behavior of this group of women other my other people in the neighborhood
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my one of my oldest friends i mean before it had become so serious that she would kind of laughingly
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joke oh oh yeah i know the group of those group of women they're the husband haters that's what we call
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that and you know it sounds tragic now at the time it was kind of seen as light-hearted and then that
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happened and um so what we have is obviously the social services were involved with
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with archie spriggs that they they weren't involved with our case at that time we were still in the
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private law realm uh but is private law that's family court yes i mean the family court also gets
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involved public law public law is basically when a local authority will act will want to take a child
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into care that becomes public law and so typically everybody is funded then through legal aid i was
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not funded through legal aid at all at the like at the private law stage my ex-wife was because she
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had a box to tick right she there was a box saying are you subject to domestic abuse
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legal aid so she so she never had to represent herself she never had to learn the ins and outs of
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family law like like i did never had to stand up in court and pretend to be some sort of barrister
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but so you know maybe 20 30 court appearances mostly rubbish mostly time wasting
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so over this this period where she was funded she had barristers i had no no sir