‘Revenge is sweet’
Jilted wife’s cruel text after pouring boiling water on husband’s mistress
A SPURNED wife who poured boiling water over her husband’s younger mistress texted ‘revenge is sweet’ to a relative after the attack, a court heard yesterday.
Monika Fourie is also accused of faking a second pregnancy in an effort to win back her Royal Marine husband Wouter, 36, after their marriage broke down.
The 34-year-old told jurors she felt like someone was ‘stabbing her in the head’ when she walked in on Mr Fourie with his 24-year- old lover Hannah Stokes.
Plymouth Crown Court heard she first asked Miss Stokes a series of questions, in an apparent bid to clear the air.
But she is said to have then doused the mistress in hot water, first from a mug and then from a kettle.
Miss Stokes was left squirming in pain and with second degree burns after the incident in October 2015. Fourie accepts she injured Miss Stokes but denies the attack was intentional.
However, she was accused of subsequently sending texts to her Polish relatives, one of which read: ‘Revenge is sweet.’
Another text was roughly translated as: ‘The bitch will pay more.’ She told the court: ‘People say things they regret. I was not thinking straight.’
She was also accused of pretending to be pregnant to try and win her husband back. In a text message to Mr Fourie the defendant said: ‘ Knowing I might be pregnant and you [ are] still seeing another woman. How does that make you feel?’
Jo Martin, prosecuting, suggested the fake pregnancy was a ‘way of trying to get your husband back’.
Fourie, from Plymouth, said: ‘I would never use that. We have been trying since my daughter was two. I told him my period was late. I believed we could still work everything out.’
She maintains she was under unbearable stress at the time of the encounter with Miss Stokes and had no memory of attacking her. Giving evidence about the incident yesterday, she said: ‘I saw a woman’s shoes on the floor. I felt like this pain in my head, like someone was stab- bing me repeatedly in my head. I knew she was there with my husband in my house and my child was upstairs.’
Fourie said a friend took her to A&E immediately after the alleged attack and her husband had to explain what had happened. She added: ‘He said, “Do you know what you have done? You poured boiling water on her.” I did not believe it. I am not a violent person.’
Fourie, now divorced, said her South African-born husband, who she met in 2004, had confessed to a string of affairs in the days before the attack. The court heard Mr Fourie and Miss Stokes split up last year.
Fourie, denies causing grievous bodily harm with intent, pleading guilty to the alternative charge of causing grievous bodily harm without intent.
The trial continues.