A lady who took her personal life after being subjected to a marketing campaign of “physical and sexual violence” by her husband told her household “I am so sorry but I just couldn’t take it any more”, a court has heard.
Tarryn Baird, 34, was discovered lifeless at her house in Swindon, Wiltshire, on 28 November 2017.
Christopher Trybus, 43, is charged together with his wife’s manslaughter in addition to two counts of rape and coercive and controlling behaviour. He denies all the costs.
Opening the trial at Winchester crown court on Tuesday, prosecutors stated Trybus’s behaviour in the direction of Baird had escalated within the two years earlier than her dying and that he was alleged to have raped her twice in late 2016.
The jury was learn a few of Baird’s diary entries, during which she appeared to observe a change in her relationship with Trybus, whom she married in 2009. The couple had moved to the UK from their native South Africa two years earlier.
One learn: “One night, during sex, I felt his hands around my neck. Something was unleashed that night. Progressively, sex got rougher. The more I fight back, the more he enjoys it.” In her diary, Baird added that this was “a side” of her husband “that has been hidden all these years”.
It is alleged that one of many rapes befell after an argument over whether or not Trybus would pay faculty charges for Baird’s cousin. Tom Little KC, prosecuting, stated Trybus had tried to strangle his wife earlier than forcing himself on her.
The court heard that Trybus had put in an app on his wife’s cell phone so he might monitor her whereabouts and, on one event, queried how lengthy she had spent at a GP surgical procedure.
Little stated Baird had visited her physician on quite a few events within the months earlier than her dying, ultimately alleging that Trybus had been violent to her.
In October 2016, she told her physician and a home abuse charity that her husband had tied a rope round her neck. “We ask you not to lose sight in this case of how she would eventually take her own life by hanging,” Little stated.
In November 2016, Baird told her physician that she had tried to depart Trybus however he had hit her with a steel pole.
The court heard that Baird didn’t “know how many more beatings she could take” however was “scared to leave”.
She made “detailed plans” to escape to a girls’s refuge a couple of weeks later, Little stated. He stated these have been foiled when Trybus, a software program developer, returned early from a enterprise journey.
Trybus allegedly threatened to inform Baird’s dad and mom she was addicted to medicine and alcohol “and that would prevent them from believing her if she told them about domestic abuse”.
In one other incident, alleged to have taken place in January 2017, Baird told her physician that Trybus had attacked her with a steel bar and punched, kicked and dragged her alongside the bottom. She additionally stated he had strangled her with a belt. Her physician observed she had bruising and friction burns on her physique.
Baird, nonetheless, was involved that any involvement of police “would make things worse, not better”.
Little stated: “Here, as always, it is important to be realistic to the catch-22 position that she must have felt in. Stay and the violence and control would continue, or leave and make a complaint to the police which might not go anywhere and she would be at greater risk.
Baird took several drug overdoses in the months before her death. The court heard her mental health had already been compromised by violence she had witnessed before leaving South Africa. In April 2016 she was admitted to hospital and seen by a mental health worker.
She said she was “surprised she was alive” and had been attempting to acquire a refuge house as she wanted to depart Trybus. She expressed fears that her actions have been being tracked and cameras had been put in in her house, the jury was told.
Baird additionally spoke to psychological well being employees on the morning of her dying and expressed suicidal ideas. Later that morning she known as the police, asking for somebody to come to her house to recuperate her physique. Shortly after, officers attended and discovered her lifeless.
Little stated: “It was the control and physical violence meted out to her, including sexual violence and the threat of and fear of physical and sexual violence on his part towards her and over time, which led to a deterioration in her already weakened mental state and was, we say, a cause of her deciding that she should take her own life.”
The trial, earlier than Judge Linden, continues. It is anticipated to final seven weeks.
