‘HE SAID WE HAD TO DIE LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET’
Woman tells how she was kept prisoner in own home by controlling former partner:
A WOMAN was kept prisoner by her partner who wanted them both to die “like Romeo and Juliet”. Sophie Crockett is now free from Simon Matthew Tibble, who kept her prisoner in the house they shared as a couple.
Sophie met Tibble when she was 17 while canvassing for a political party.
He was 13 years older than her and, she said, his fixation with her began immediately.
Sophie said he started to attend meetings just to see her, before turning up at her front door.
Sophie, from Mountain Ash, Cynon Valley, said: “The first time I met him outside of meetings, he started holding my hand and standing really close to me.
“I felt uncomfortable with this as I didn’t know him, but because of my social anxieties I did not say anything.
“He also turned up at my house that I inhabited with my parents without me telling him my address.
“He turned up on the doorstep with ice-creams. It frightened me but again I kept silent.”
Home-schooled from the age of 10 due to issues around socialising, Sophie found herself with no friends to talk to about what was happening.
Things started to move quickly, against the warnings of her parents.
Sophie, who has Asperger’s syndrome, said: “He didn’t have a bed but an air-bed and, because I used to be cold, he used to make me sleep on the wooden floorboards.”
Sophie, now 25, said Tibble would wash and feed her and tell her not to wear make-up.
Instead he would tell her to dress in jeans and a T-shirt with a bow on top of her head.
She said: “After a few months he pressured me to move in together so we rented a semi-detached cottage that he named the Magnetic Cottage – he used to say we were both sides of the magnet. He was north and I was south.
“I had a puppy given to us, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel called Star.
“He used her as a tool against me, stopping me from leaving, saying that otherwise he would hurt her.”
The couple’s two-year relationship began to change.
Tibble refused to let her out of his sight, threatening her parents if she did.
Sophie said: “He insisted on com-
ing into the bathroom with me when I needed the toilet.
“If I refused he would sit me down on the sofa and give me a lecture on ‘togetherness’.
“He would write down these lectures on a large mirror that was hanging in the living room and he would spend hours making me listen to him.”
Sophie, who was living with Tibble in Trecynon, Aberdare, said: “I was not allowed to wear anything to bed; he would not allow it.
“I needed to be pressed up against him all night otherwise my life wouldn’t be worth living.”
Sophie said she woke one morning and found herself faced with a knife. She was told it would be the day she died.
“I woke up at around 7am and he told me ‘today is the day we die’.
“He then left the bed too quick for me to climb out of the window and came back upstairs with the knife.
“He said, ‘ We must now be like Romeo and Juliet, we will never leave this room but be together forever.’
Sophie was kept in the house for four days.
She said Tibble locked the doors and windows and sent text messages to her mother pretending to be her.
Sophie, who was 19 when she escaped, said: “He forbade me to leave the house, hiding my shoes.”
On December 9, 2013, Tibble pleaded guilty to falsely imprisoning Sophie for four days in June 2012.
During the hearing at Merthyr Crown Court, Tibble, of Ebenezer Road, Trecynon, was given an indefinite hospital order and a restraining order.
Five years later Sophie and her family were told by the Ministry of Justice that Tibble had applied to a mental health tribunal for unescorted leave.
She said: “It was my worst nightmare come true.
“I couldn’t believe it. We were told that he would never be let out and now here was this letter; I felt suicidal. I live in constant fear. I am even too scared to go into my own garden.”
Since then Sophie has been informed that Tibble, now 37, has been moved to a halfway house in Bridgend.
Sophie is now said to suffer from complex post-traumatic stress disorder. As well as regular flashbacks, she sleeps in the daytime due to trouble relaxing at night.
She said she wants her story to be heard to stop others from going through the experience she has had.
She said: “I have decided to tell my story because I want to warn other women to look out for the signs.
“I also want people to know what happened to me; I want to break the stigma surrounding it and I feel like I want to tell everyone.”
Offenders subject to a restricted hospital order are discharged when an independent Mental Health Tribunal is satisfied they no longer need to be detained in hospital for treatment to protect the public.
But they can be recalled to hospital if their mental health deteriorates.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Those discharged from a restricted hospital order are supervised by both a social worker and a clinical supervisor, generally a consultant psychiatrist.
“In circumstances such as this, they are also usually subject to conditions that prevent them from contacting or going close to their victims. They may also be recalled to hospital if their mental health deteriorates.”