The Beeb should have booted this bully off the dancef loor
With just 11 exquisitely chosen words, she launched her salvo: ‘My name is Rebecca humphries and i am not a victim.’
So said the very ex-girlfriend of Seann Walsh, the comedian who was Strictly nobody until caught doing a tongue-tango with his dance partner Katya Jones. Wow.
in an age when victimhood seems to be a badge of honour, that’s the first time i’ve heard a woman rejecting the cloak of martyrdom.
She went on, with intelligence, humour and generosity of spirit, to explain her side of the story. to own it, as the saying goes. Good for her. i especially loved the last line about her taking the couple’s cat.
Conclusion: Walsh is even more of a creep than he appears on the surface. if the makers of Strictly Come Dancing had a shred of respect for his ex, they’d have booted him off the instant she made her devastating statement.
instead, they’ve chased the ratings. the ghoulish spectacle of Seann and Katya doing the Charleston on Saturday night will no doubt draw the crowds.
Remember that the next time the BBC crows about supporting women. Because Rebecca was not just another wronged partner.
in her statement, she described the kind of experience that will be only too familiar to millions of women: being trapped in a relationship with a ‘gaslighter’.
that’s the term for someone who, through subtle manipulation and sustained abuse of power, undermines their partner’s self-confidence, self-belief and, ultimately, their sanity, in a bid to keep them under the thumb.
the term, well understood in psychiatric circles, has its origins in the 1944 film Gaslight, starring ingrid Bergman as a wife whose husband attempts to convince her and those around them that she is delusional by making her question the reality of small, but significant, events in their life.
it’s a form of control, often exercised by vain individuals who feed their narcissistic needs by sucking the confidence out of others.
that Walsh fits this pattern is not entirely surprising: any man with hair like his is bound to be in love only with himself. But Rebecca’s rebuttal describes a textbook offender. ‘those pictures were taken on October 3rd,’ she wrote in her online post. ‘it was my birthday. i was alone at home when Sean texted at 10pm saying the two of them were going for one innocent drink. We spoke and i told him, not for the first time, that his actions over the past three weeks had led me to believe something inappropriate was going on.
‘he aggressively, and repeatedly, called me a psycho / nuts / mental. As he has done countless times throughout our relationship when i’ve questioned his inappropriate, hurtful behaviour.’
had the pair not been pictured in flagrante, Walsh would have succeeded in making Rebecca seem like the ‘difficult one’ — a hysterical troublemaker — while feeding his own ego by dallying with the married Katya.
DOING so on her birthday — when a partner can expect to be made to feel a bit special — was a particularly vicious twist. By denying her even that little scrap of self-worth, he showed just how willing he was to humiliate her.
happily, this nasty little exercise of his has failed. Maybe his vanity is such that he believed his girlfriend of five years would simply let him off. Or even that, at 32 — an age when a woman’s mind is naturally distracted by the ticking of her biological clock — she might take the view that the devil you know is better than nothing.
But Rebecca is far stronger than that. Overcoming this bullying, male behaviour is not easy. the casual cruelty of it is a hammerblow to the heart, especially if — as she admits — you happen to love the man, despite it all.
Right now, it must seem like the worst of times for her (although i guarantee her friends and family will be celebrating). But she’s certainly better off without him.
i have no doubt this experience will enable her to go on to find someone who treats her with the love and respect she deserves. Until then, she’s still got the cat.