He told me I was – I fell for his lies

Anna Rowe thought she had found love on a dating app – but after discovering he was a fake who was married with children, she wants a change in the law

prosecuted.

Creating a fake persona on the internet with the intention of duping others into a relationship is known as “catfishing”.

Anna said: “I am a victim of a catfish approach. Using a fake profile and online identity as a platform to lure women or men for sex should be illegal, but it’s not. “The result is the other party believing they are beginning a real relationship with the hope of a future together and having sex is part of that believed relationship.” Anna has launched her campaign with an online petition.

The former Barton Court Grammar School pupil was married and divorced in her 20s and then had two children with another man. She and her boys’ father split in 2010 and by the summer of 2015 Anna was ready to find love again.

She signed up to various dating websites, including Tinder, which operates via a mobile phone application.

It wasn’t long before she was matched with a man called Antony Ray.

They chatted on the app for a few weeks and Anna remembers that she was drawn to his profile: “It was grounded, sincere. He said he was single, solvent, honest, genuine, not afraid of commitment. “He disliked mind games, endless cyber chat and communication was key. By late October I was hooked. He had drawn me in. He clearly stated it was more than sex he wanted, it was a meaningful relationship, passionate oneto-one.”

His profile picture was Antony’s first deceit. It wasn’t him. It was in fact a photograph of the Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan.

He and Anna, however, switched to com communicating via Whatsapp, another online messaging service, through which he sent real photos of himself. They met for the first time on November 3, 2015, when Antony drove from London to Rough Common. Anna was instantly smitten. She said: “He walked into my house with a quiet confidence, calm and an ease that felt like he had done the same every night for years. “It was like he was supposed to be there. He instinctively knew how to hold me. It was like I’d known him and him me for far longer than we had.” They were intimate that first night, the springboard for six months of an intense and passionate relationship. “He asked me to marry him several times, called me his life, his heart, his soul,” she said. “He called me his wife and told me to call him my husband. He would be there for me always and we had the rest of our lives together.” Antony visited Anna about twice a week. He explained his periodic absences by saying that as a director his work often took him abroad, to places like Germany and Ireland. As 2015 turned to 2016, Anna says Antony’s passion appeared to be cooling and that he explained this because his mother had become ill, showing signs of ovarian cancer. “He constantly told me he loved me and sent me voice messages saying we would get through any obstacle that came our way,” she said. “He told me he couldn’t get through this without me. “My heart hurt for all he was going through. He would tell me how much it meant to him that he knew I was there for him, that

Anna was duped by the man she first met on Tinder