The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Northern man denies controlling behaviour towards wife
Court: Four assault charges included
A Highland man tried to control his wife by stopping her socialising without him, taking away her mobile phone and locking her in their house, a court heard.
Ewen Mackenzie, 41, denies engaging in a course of conduct which caused Linda Mackenzie fear or alarm at their Lochaber and elsewhere between January 1 and May 23 this year.
The charge further alleges that Mackenzie, of 3 Donald Row, Gleann an Cross, Morar, near Mallaig, prevented her from wearing cosmetics, shouted and swore at her and unplugged the house phone.
He also pleaded not guilty at an earlier hearing at Fort William Sheriff Court to assaulting Miss Mackenzie by seizing hold of her and dragging her to her injury on May 7 and May 21 and assaulting her and her friend Jody Dempster by pushing them and placing them in a headlock on May 23.
At the start of his trial yesterday, his solicitor Gerry Sweeney lodged a defence of self-defence to the four assault charges.
Miss Mackenzie, 39, who works as a waitress, told the court they had been together for 15 years and married for five years.
She said they had been unhappy for sometime, but the situation escalated around March or April of this year when she told him she did not want to be with him anymore and they have since separated.
She said: “He was conhome stantly checking my phone. Any messages, anything I got on it, he was trying to see who it was from.
“He would take the house phones and hide the mand my mobilephone and any other phones.”
And, she said, she could not go out because he kept blocking doors and hiding her keys.
She added that she felt “trapped” and “suffocated”. Miss Mackenzie said on one occasion her husband grabbed her arms, dragged her outside and put her on the floor, where she scraped her back on the doorstep, causing bruising to her back and her arms.
She said her arms were also bruised in the second assault when he seized hold of her and “flung her onto the couch”.
During cross-examination, she told the court that she had become more friendly with a long-standing male friend and they had started texting each other.
She added that Mackenzie found text messages from him on her phone and thought she was being unfaithful, which she said was untrue.
The trial will continue on August 17.