Arrested and locked nagging up... for my husband
Her marriage became national news when she was thrown in a cell after demanding her husband vacuum the house. Here, for the first time, Valerie tells her side of a saga that will divide households across Britain
He’s nobody to me after what he put through’ me
VALERIE NEAL was letting her dachshunds out and contemplating dinner when the police turned up at 6pm one afternoon last April.
She wasn’t concerned — husband Michael Sanders was a former prison officer and the couple were on first name terms with their local force.
But this was no social call. The four men informed the 59-year-old they were arresting her and put her into the back of one of two police vans outside her two-bedroom home in Catterick, North Yorkshire.
The stunned 4ft 10in mother-of-two was driven to Harrogate police station where she was stripped of her possessions, finger-printed and put in a windowless cell overnight.
By the time Valerie was released at 10am the following day, she was banned from her marital home, branded a criminal and facing the terrifying prospect of trial by jury to clear her name.
Her alleged crime? Making her husband’s life a misery.
Valerie was charged with controlling and coercive behaviour towards Michael — an offence that became a crime in December 2015 in an attempt to tackle non-physical abuse in domestic relationships. This abuse includes persistent threats and attempts to humiliate and control.
In what both Valerie and Michael, 59, agree was an increasingly unhappy marriage, she insists the most she is guilty of is hassling her now ex-husband — who had depression — to vacuum, of complaining he spent too much time devoted to his precious sports car and ordering him to cut down on trips to the gym.
Whether that warranted the criminal charges she faced is a matter of opinion. ‘All I ever asked my husband to do was vacuum the house, make me a cup of tea and wipe marks off the patio doors,’ says Valerie.
‘If that’s nagging, I’ll hold my hands up to it. But asking your husband to vacuum is not, in my eyes, a criminal offence.’
There was an agonising 14month wait for her case to be heard then, at the last minute, she was told the trial would not go ahead. A key witness — a Job Centre employee Michael confided his marital woes to and who passed this information to the police — didn’t turn up and Michael changed his mind about the prosecution.
ALL charges were dropped in exchange for Valerie accepting a two-year restraining order, which she regrets accepting, saying: ‘I wish I’d never taken it. I wish I’d had my day in court.’
Valerie, who runs her own cleaning company, explains that she was too worn down by the process to protest. ‘If it meant the end of it and I could lead a normal life again I’d take it.’
Coercive and controlling behaviour — which carries a maximum sentence of five years — is a much discussed crime with the overwhelming majority of prosecutions being against men (97 per cent in England and Wales in 2016).
Certainly, such offences are difficult to prosecute. Since the law came into force in December 2015, 7,034 people have been arrested but only 1,157 charged and just 235 convicted.
Yet Valerie — whose Decree Nisi was granted last month — is adamant she should never have come close to contributing to those statistics. ‘I appreciate our marriage was on the rocks but for Mike to treat me the way he did, after all the love and care I put into the relationship, was devastating,’ she says.
Valerie is tanned from a week in Montenegro with her daughters from previous relationships, Lindsay, 39, a bar manager, and secretary Alex, 29, who have supported her throughout.
She is speaking exclusively to the Mail from the home she now rents in Catterick with her new boyfriend Tony, 33, also a cleaner, who helped her in the aftermath of her arrest. Their two-seater sofa is pristine, their carpet spotless from daily vacuuming — Valerie is clearly houseproud. She’s also forthright and extrovert but adamant that she didn’t dominate Michael, who was working as a CCTV operator for a security company contracted to the military when they met in July 2012. ‘I’m outgoing and can talk to anyone. He was timid,’ she says. ‘But our personalities attracted.’
Both had two children from previous relationships and, having been single since 2005 when a 20-year relationship broke down, she, like Michael, was looking for commitment. ‘He was a gentleman, kind and funny,’ says Valerie, who realised their relationship had a future after a holiday to Cyprus that October. Shortly after, Valerie sold her home in Stockton-onTees and moved into Michael’s two - bedroom detached property, using the £30,000 she made from the sale to lavish her new boyfriend with gifts including a £ 2,000 motorbike and £5,000 sports car.
Having more money than her boyfriend might have shifted the balance of power in her direction, yet she insists she was happy to splash out.
Michael proposed in December 2013 and they married at Richmond Register Office in October 2014.
But Valerie soon realised Michael was increasingly content to leave her to the chores. ‘In the beginning he did the vacuuming but I think he got used to me doing it. His level of tidying was not as high as mine,’ admits Valerie.
‘I’d say, “Mike, the black highgloss furniture attracts dust. Can you just dust?”’
As months passed, Valerie started to resent coming home to vacuum, having spent all day doing it for other people, not least because the prized black and silver living room carpet showed up every speck of hair from her two dogs.
That Mike, who regularly worked evening shifts, didn’t lavish her with attention on her return also irked. ‘I said it would be nice for me to come home and have a cup of tea made for me,’ says Valerie. ‘He said he didn’t drink tea — why should he? I said because we were married. I was frustrated.’
She was further annoyed by Michael’s refusal to buy her groceries from Tesco, insisting instead on going to Lidl or Aldi.
‘I told him he was getting me butter I’d never heard of and wasn’t getting girly food like biscuits and cream cakes. He said, “get your own food then” so I said, “I will.” ’
In March 2017, Michael
resigned from his job after being offered a new position managing the gym he attended.
Already a keep-fit enthusiast who lifted weights three times a week, he started to exercise every day, returning home late and embarking on a restricted, and mostly liquidised diet, to accompany his vigorous training.
Suddenly, Valerie was left to eat her freshly prepared spaghetti bolognese alone while Michael pureed chicken breast, strawberries, spinach and milk together.
‘I said it must taste foul. He asked if there was any law that said you had to eat chicken with veg. My criticism annoyed him.’
By her own admission not a regular exerciser, Valerie doesn’t sound particularly understanding of her husband’s hobby.
‘I like my food. I said, “Michael, why are you doing this? Enjoy your life.” It was putting strain on our marriage. If we went out for a meal he’d pick at chicken while I’d be wanting a steak. He’d be out of the house from 6am until 9pm. I felt isolated. When I told him he wasn’t spending time with me, he said he saw me at the weekend. ‘But on Sundays all he did was spend hours cleaning the sports Nissan 350Z soft top I bought him, which was probably his way of relaxation.’
Does she think it might have been Michael’s way of getting away from her? ‘No. If he wanted that he could drive somewhere.’
Part of her appears to have been in denial, not least given an unhappy Michael suggested they divorce in 2017. ‘I said, “come on, Mike, I love you.” I probably didn’t take it on board,’ she admits. Her dissatisfaction in the marriage, meanwhile, was compounded by Michael’s drastic transformation — his two-stone weight loss and ripped physique aided, she later found out, by steroids.
‘ His body shape started to change. It was like cuddling an ironing board. I told him I didn’t find him attractive. He said I should get used to it.’
Their sex life dwindled from once a week, to once a month, before grinding to a halt. Not only that, she believes, but his new muscles were pushing down on his lungs, making him snore. ‘I said he was getting so big he was keeping me awake,’ says Valerie, who started sleeping in the spare room.
This miserable state of affairs came to a head in December 2017, when Michael failed to reach sales targets at the gym. ‘He took it to heart and got depressed,’ says Valerie. ‘He stopped shaving and looked unkempt. He asked me what would happen if he lost his job — how would the mortgage get paid. I said that I worked. I was worried about him.’
In January 2018, Michael resigned. ‘He couldn’t eat and wasn’t sleeping. He said he felt unworthy of the world and he felt like taking his life,’ recalls Valerie. Among the questions police asked her were whether she had given Michael a knife to cut his wrists or paracetamol to take an overdose — allegations she denies.
Nonetheless, she can’t be accused of mollycoddling him. ‘I said, “come on, Mike, life can’t be that bad, get yourself up, get your hair washed, have a shave”. I didn’t treat him with kid gloves but I didn’t say it nastily,’ she insists. ‘I still loved him.’
There can be no doubt Michael was unhappy in his marriage — he confided as much to a Job Centre employee that April.
Seemingly without Michael’s knowledge, he told the police what he’d heard. Michael had left the house by the time Valerie woke the next day, and was, she was told, giving statements at the station when she was arrested. ‘I was bewildered. I’ve never controlled anyone in my life. I even asked what controlling behaviour was.’
Her cell had a mattress, a bench and stainless steel toilet. Valerie stayed awake until dawn, ‘absolutely terrified’ in the blue police top she’d been given to cover her shivering, sleeveless arms.
THE only time she saw Michael, who filed for divorce shortly after her arrest, was days later when, accompanied by a police escort, she returned to the marital home to pick up clothes. ‘I told him there was no need to call the police,’ says Valerie, who spent the three weeks following her arrest sleeping on Tony’s mother’s sofa before renting her new home.
As months passed her shock turned to devastation. She ‘didn’t dare’ talk to mutual friends who sided with her husband, and felt increasingly anxious about her impending court case. ‘ I was scared, devastated and worried it would affect my business.’
Luckily, she says, most of her clients called the charges ‘baloney’ and she insists she never felt ashamed or daunted at the prospect of prison: ‘I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had nothing to hide.’
The more she learned about the charge, however, the angrier she got. ‘It was making a mockery of a law designed to protect vulnerable people,’ she says.
As for Michael, she says: ‘He’s a nobody to me after what he put me through.’
Michael gave an interview to a newspaper in June but did not respond to requests from the Mail to comment. After the trial collapsed he told the paper Valerie said he was training too much, that she wanted him to clean every day and wouldn’t eat the food he cooked from Aldi or Lidl.
He said he thought it ‘ wrong’ they ended up sleeping in separate rooms because a ‘ married couple should sleep together’.
He also said he was on steroids, was depressed and still taking anti-depressants.
‘I told her I was suicidal and she told me to get on with it,’ he added, claiming that he ‘couldn’t cope any more with the constant nagging.’
He said: ‘I know people might say the nagging is just married life, but this is not married life to me.
‘I think it was controlling, but I’m not sure if she should have gone to court or not. That was not my decision.’