HOW CAN A WIFE BE SO HEARTLESS?
After Simon was maimed by a Taliban bomb, his wife walked out, squandered much of his £1million compensation – then took him to court for MORE
LYNNE BAUGH recalls the man her son Simon once was: strong, physical, active. She reads from a framed Army citation on the wall. Simon was ‘ universally liked, very capable . . . a highly professional commando- trained soldier, also excellent fun’.
Seven years ago, while serving in Afghanistan, Corporal Simon Vaughan volunteered to lead a reconnaissance patrol and was blown up by a Taliban bomb. He came so close to death that he was flown home with an obituary pinned to his bag.
Today, Simon still needs round-the- clock care. He is in a wheelchair and his speech is halting and indistinct. Yet despite everything, the accolade from his commanding officer cheers his mother. ‘ He said Simon was one of his scruffiest soldiers, but also among the best and most conscientious — selfless in his commitment.
‘ I was proud,’ adds Lynne, ‘ but also broken-hearted.’
Were it not for his implacable spirit, Simon might have perished. But Simon is a fighter, and his stubborn will and humour are undiminished — qualities he has needed during a court battle with his former wife, Donna, over money.
Lynne suspects that even as Simon fought for his life in intensive care, Donna ‘ was working out how much would be paid out if he died’.
Then, on Valentine’s Day 2013, after ten years of marriage, a pregnant Donna, 33, walked out, taking their son. She didn’t even tell Simon she was leaving. In the messy aftermath, he tried to strangle himself.
It later emerged that Donna had ‘ squandered’ — in the words of Simon’s mother — a large part of the £1.1 million compensation money that was intended for his long-term care and rehabilitation.
She bought a bungalow in rural Shropshire for £295,000 without a survey, then found it was structurally unsound. It was demolished and rebuilt by her father, at a cost of £300,000, but still failed to meet building regulations.
By the time Donna took him to court in September, Simon’s compensation pot had been whittled down to £200,000.
She was demanding almost all the money he had left, plus a one-third share in the bungalow, which was specially adapted for his needs — even though he was still paying the mortgage on their former home in Telford, which is in negative equity.
As Lynne remarks bitterly: ‘ She seemed quite happy to make him sell the bungalow — his home — because she wanted a share in it.’
Could Donna’s excessive demands possibly be justified? Last month, after a three- day hearing, a judge decreed that they could not; that Simon should keep his bungalow; and that his former wife should not be granted a share. Happy at least about this decision, Simon is nonetheless still worried about the future.
He must find £1,500 a month in maintenance for his children, aged 13 and two — payments he does not begrudge because ‘taking care of their needs was always my priority’.
What rankles is a raft of further payments he must find. Donna was granted ownership of the house they had shared in Telford and Simon was ordered to pay her £30,000 to offset the negative equity on the property.
Not only that, he had to give her another £10,000 for expenses such as buying a car.
Incredibly, he must pay her £84,163 legal bill and his own £28,615 court costs, and on top of that foot the £20,000 cost of putting right his new home — a sum he believes his former father-in-law, who built it, should have found.
Left with around £28,000 and unable ever to make more, he can no longer afford the thrice-weekly intensive physiotherapy sessions or the hydrotherapy and speech therapy that was improving his quality of life.
He had taken his first tentative steps with a walking frame, but can now afford only one physio session a week, so progress will be curtailed.
‘ It’s a setback because he was making such progress,’ says Lynne. ‘We had hoped he’d be walking with a frame within two or three years.’
Lynne has become his carer. She does not claim the government allowance to which she is entitled because her husband Kevin, 55, a maintenance engineer, earns enough to meet their needs and those of their children, Abbie, 17, and Dylan, 14.
The family is close- knit. When Donna left, Lynne, Kevin, Dylan and Abbie moved in with Simon, Lynne’s son from her first marriage.
She is clearly dismayed by Donna’s stance, but strives to remain measured. ‘It can’t have been easy,’
she says. ‘I know how I felt when Simon was so badly injured. I don’t know how I’d have coped as his wife.
‘He was the money earner and an absolutely brilliant dad; physically strong — her protector and provider. In the blink of an eye, all that was gone.
‘But it is the way Donna has acted that hurts. Her love of money took over.’
Donna was invited to respond to this article, but chose not to. Her solicitors said: ‘ This has been a difficult process for the Vaughan family, but Mrs Vaughan is pleased that a satisfactory outcome to the case for herself and her children has been reached.’
Simon and Donna married in 2002. ‘When our son was born I loved it,’ says Simon. (Lynne, attuned to the cadences of his voice, helps to interpret his speech.)
Even then, there were problems with money. He returned from six months in Iraq in 2003, expecting to find several thousand pounds in their bank account. In fact, it was overdrawn, and the couple rowed.
But the rift was healed. In the years that followed, Simon was posted to Northern Ireland and Plymouth, and then to Afghanistan in September 2008. Before he left, he doubled his personal accident insurance and discussed his will with his mother.
She recalls: ‘ That conversation will never leave me. He said: “I don’t think I’ll be walking off the plane when I come home.”
‘He wanted to make sure the mortgage was paid off and the rest of his money put in trust for his son. He specified he didn’t want Donna to have charge of any payout.
‘Then, before he left, he went to see everyone who meant anything to him, to say goodbye.’ There was an awful prescience about his actions.
Two months later, Simon was stretchered off the homebound plane with brain damage, a shattered pelvis, a broken back and collapsed lungs.
‘When the casualty officer rang, I thought: “It’s come true,” ’ says Lynne.
‘I said: “Please just tell me he’s not dead.” I felt as if I was being strangled.
‘The officer heard the sound I made. He said: “Would you like us to come and explain?” — and he came round with Donna.’
THE path to even partial recovery was arduous. Simon was in intensive care for 44 days and then spent more than two years in hospitals and undergoing rehabilitation at Headley Court in Surrey.
In September 2009 — long before he was able to go home, in April 2011 — Army compensation of £570,000 was paid into Simon and Donna’s joint bank account.
Other sums, including payouts from his personal injury policies, and charitable donations, brought the total to £1.1 million.
But far from salting the money away for her husband’s future, Donna switched it into accounts in her sole name. Just two months later, she bought the bungalow for £295,000 in cash and registered it as her own.
In court, Simon’s barrister Richard Sear — who waived his fee — was scathing about Donna’s actions. She had spent Simon’s money without his consent, he told the court, because he could not at the time communicate — though she claimed otherwise — and was mentally incapable of agreeing to buy the bungalow.
‘It was your decision not to have a survey before purchasing the property,’ said Mr Sear. He pointed out that when problems emerged with the house, ‘you were advised by the Army to demolish it, sell the land and cut your losses’.
Her lawyers argued that Donna felt she was acting in her husband’s best interests. Instead, having commissioned her father to demolish the bungalow, she spent a further £300,000 on a replacement.
‘That was a terrible amount of money to have gone from the total compensation,’ said Mr Sear.
Donna’s financial decisions appeared to be injudicious at best, reckless at worst. Almost £600,000 was spent, yet Simon today has a property valued at just £410,000.
‘So much of Simon’s long-term compensation money was squandered because Donna flouted the good advice she was given by Simon’s Army medical liaison officer,’ says Lynne.
Moreover, Donna claimed she had put the remaining cash in a trust fund for Simon, when she had invested it in two bonds in her own name, according to his lawyers.
When Lynne saw a copy of Simon’s bank statements, there was only £4,000 left. ‘What I thought about Donna is unprintable,’ she says.
Donna also applied for a charitable donation from the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen & Families Association — while failing to mention the bonds she had in her name.
‘There were lots of charity events,’ says Lynne. ‘ Simon’s father gave £15,000 to Donna from a golf day. We’ve no idea how that was spent.’
Lynne is now calling on the Ministry of Defence to ensure all injury compensation it pays out is protected.
‘The MoD should appoint an independent trustee for every injured soldier until they pass a mental capacity test,’ she says.
‘If they’d done that for Simon, as I suggested repeatedly when he was in hospital, I believe he would have proper money for his future.’
As it is, Lynne looks after her son — whose condition is greatly improved, she says — with the help of two paid carers.
‘His personality is fundamentally unchanged — his cheekiness and humour, his stubborn determina- tion to improve. Just every now and then his brain injury kicks in and he gets frustrated and angry. When he can’t deal with himself, no one else can. We just retreat.’ A motto on the wall sums up Simon’s philosophy: ‘Take pride in how far you have come and have faith in how far you can go.’
Unsurprisingly, at one point he did sink into depression. Lynne would distract him by putting him on the sit- on mower to cut the grass or giving him a brush to paint garden furniture.
‘They showed me life wasn’t over by making me do manual labour!’ jokes Simon.
In his days with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, he was a joker. He played rugby and loved a party. No wonder his wheelchair felt like a prison.
HE WAS in respite care when Donna left him, says Lynne, who received a call from Donna’s mother to say she had gone. She said she hoped Lynne would be the one to tell Simon what had happened.
It was ‘horrendous’, says Lynne. ‘I would put him to bed and every night he’d ask when Donna and his son were coming back. I had to say: “She’s left.” His brain didn’t seem to process the information.
‘Then one night he crumpled. He said: “They’re not coming back, are they?” It was the end of everything he had post injury.’
The first he knew of his daughter’s birth was seeing her photo on Facebook. Amid disputes and confusion over access to his children, and refusing to take anti-depressants, he reached a nadir.
His carer went in one morning and found the electric cable that adjusts his bed wrapped round his neck, his face purple. She managed to unwind the lead just in time.
Did Simon intend to take his life? ‘I think it was a stupid cry for attention,’ he says now. ‘Perhaps I wanted to die. I can’t remember.’
Today, he is optimistic, consoled that his home at least is safe.
Lynne, who used to work in accounting, is still worried. ‘ I’ll never let him go into a home, but now his compensation has been eaten away, I fear for him when I’m not around.
‘Just who will be his voice when I’m not here?’