Marine’s wife who scalded rival with kettle gets 5 years
THE spurned wife of a cheating Royal Marine was jailed for five years yesterday for pouring boiling water on her love rival.
Monika Fourie had faced up to 16 years in prison but was shown leniency because of her ‘fragile’ state.
Her husband, Wouter Fourie, had tormented her with details of his affairs to drive a wedge between them.
The mother- of- one’s victim, Hannah Stokes, 26, received third-degree burns to her neck, chest and back when Fourie emptied a boiling kettle over her.
Fourie, 34, who sought revenge after finding Miss Stokes at her home with her husband, wept as she was led away to begin her sentence.
Judge Paul Barlow told the Polish-born defendant that while the attack was not premeditated, she had intended ‘causing a more serious injury than was inflicted’.
But he explained he was ‘step- outside’ sentencing guidelines, saying: ‘You were devoted to your husband and daughter, who were your whole life.
‘On that day you were in an extremely fragile and vulnerable state. Your husband had drip fed information to try and get you to push him away. I bear in mind the provocation to you as a result of what you saw when you returned to your own home. It is understandable but not justifiable.’
Fourie met her husband in Germany in 2004 and they married in 2008, two years after moving to Britain. But the defendant, who was from a Catholic family and had never had a sexual experience before meeting the Afghanistan veteran, was devastated after he returned from a Marine training exercise in the US and admitted he had been unfaithful.
Mr Fourie began his affair with Miss Stokes during the summer of 2015. His wife said it felt as if someone was ‘stabbing me repeatedly in the head’ when she found them watching TV at her home in Plymouth on October 24 that year.
The defendant ordered her husband upstairs to check on their daughter while she spoke to Miss Stokes. But she threw a mug of scalding water on her rival before emptying the contents of the kettle on her. Afterwards, she texted a relative: ‘Revenge is sweet.’
Fourie, who is now divorced from her husband, claims to have no memory of the assault.
Plymouth Crown Court heard she was suffering from an ‘adjustment disorder’ as she came to terms with the end of her sevenyear marriage.
The relationship came under strain after Mr Fourie was blown up twice in Afghanistan in 2013.
University worker Miss Stokes, who split from South African-born Mr Fourie last year, has been told she cannot have cosmetic surgery on the NHS to treat her scarring.
But she claims she cannot afford the £10,000 it would cost for private cosmetic treatment.
The boiling water also affected her right ear drum and she may have to wear a hearing aid.
Ali Rafati, defending, said Fourie was ‘an intelligent, articulate, caring, loving woman’ who had led an impeccable life before the incident. Fourie, of Plymouth, admitted causing grievous bodily harm but was convicted by the jury of the more serious offence of GBH with intent.