My husband lied for nine years that he had cancer
A WOMAN whose former husband faked having cancer for the entire nine years they were together said yesterday that his lies ‘stole her life’.
Lucy Witchard met David Carroll in 2006 when they were students and he told her that he had leukaemia.
The couple married in 2011 and during the four years of their marriage he went on to claim he was suffering from prostate cancer and then terminal stomach cancer.
She only rumbled the conman when he persuaded her disabled mother, Linda Eccles, to hand over £2,000 to pay for pioneering stomach cancer treatment in the US – but spent the cash on a holiday there.
The family became suspicious while Carroll was abroad in 2015. When Mrs Witchard confronted him on his return he went ‘ballistic’, and tried to keep up the pretence.
‘He even got a work friend to call me pretending to be his doctor,’ she said. ‘I knew after that phone call that our marriage was over.’
Carroll, 35, was last week given a six-month jail sentence suspended for two years after being convicted of fraud by false representation.
He was also ordered to carry out 180 hours unpaid work and a restraining order was imposed banning him from contacting his ex-wife or former mother-in-law for a year.
Mrs Witchard, 31, a teacher, from Leicester, said he would not allow her to attend his chemotherapy sessions.
‘He would say, “I’m protecting you from this”, and I’d get too emotional being there,’ she said. ‘When I questioned his treatment he threatened to leave me saying our relationship could not work if I didn’t trust him.’
Mrs Witchard, a Roman Catholic, had the marriage annulled on the grounds that his lies meant that she went into the union under false pretences. She has since remarried. But she said she still felt ‘incredibly hurt and angry’. She added: ‘I’m sad that he’s stolen my life.’
Leicester Magistrates’ Court heard how Carroll told Mrs Eccles, 64, that he had been given between five and ten months to live because he had stomach cancer. Prosecutor Ali Zaki said Carroll, who wept in the dock, invented the fatal condition to con the money out of her.
Mrs Eccles, a widow who suffers from multiple sclerosis, read out a victim impact statement from her mobility scooter in court. She said Carroll had ‘violated our family by his lies, deceit and selfishness.’
Carroll, now of Ruthin, Denbighshire, had also told fellow members of Aylestone Athletic Rugby Club in Leicester that he had leukaemia.
Ex-teammate Jonathan Hunt said: ‘The club organised two charity fundraising events to support Carroll and people with leukaemia.’
Gordon Hart, defending, said his client who was of previous good character, was suffering from a personality disorder at the time of the fraud and has since had treatment for it. Carroll had faked illness many times since 2007 not for financial gain but to win sympathy.