Brave mum’s domestic violence warning
‘Middle class’ domestic violence victim speaks out
AS a ‘middle-class’ woman working as a director at blue chip firms, Helen Hayes said the notion she would become a victim of domestic abuse had never even entered her mind.
But by the time her husband was screaming at her during a Boxing Day row about a dirty cereal bowl, she felt she had lost herself.
“I want people to stop thinking ‘this will never happen to me.’ It can happen,” she says now – just weeks after her husband was convicted of assaulting her and her son, who was then a child.
Helen’s now estranged husband, Andrew Lever, has been convicted of domestic violence offences stretching back EIGHT years. Helen has decided to speak out to help other women.
She met Lever when they were at neighbouring single sex schools in Stockport – in fact he was her first boyfriend. They split as teenagers before Helen married, had a son with autism and was widowed – all by the age of 34.
When Lever – who is a Stockport-based jeweller – came back into her life they both ‘had baggage,’ she says. He was divorced and had a son from that marriage. Helen was still mourning her husband.
But she says the early days with Lever were ‘nice.’
The couple married in 2009 and moved into a home in Wilmslow together. They enjoyed Caribbean holidays together and all the trappings of success, including a boat.
But, as the years went on, more and more little moments of unpleasantness started seeping into their marriage.
“His moods governed and controlled the entire house constantly,” Helen explains.
“It builds and builds. It has a capillary action and before you know it, it’s inside you. You shut down. You shut your family out, you shut your friends out.”
It was in October 2010, while the couple were on a caravan holiday to Anglesey, when Lever violently attacked his wife for the first time.
During that attack – sparked over a disagreement about trainer socks – Lever spat in Helen’s face and headbutted her. The violence left her with two black eyes and a lump on her forehead ‘like a giant horn.’ The injury was so painful she was unable to pull a jumper over her head.
It had happened just metres from where their children, then both aged 10, were sleeping.
Prosecutors say Lever had been drinking and became violent once the children had gone to bed.
Afterwards, Helen begged Lever to leave – but he stayed and apologised in the morning.
The attack, prosecuted as an assault causing actual bodily harm, was one of four violent offences admitted by Lever during a hearing at Chester Crown Court.
He also admitted criminal damage and two separate section 39 assaults – one on Helen and one on her son, who was 17 at the time. An audio recording submitted to the court by prosecutors reveals how a Boxing Day row escalated into violence.
During that attack, in 2017, Lever shoved Helen into a wall after dragging her to her then 17-year-old son’s bedroom to show her a dirty cereal bowl he’d found there.
As Helen tried to calm him down prosecutors say Lever ‘reached an explosion point,’ shoved her hard and she fell into the wall shouting “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Though she was not injured, Helen says she then realised she ‘could not fix’ her husband – who she says had already been through two courses of counselling.
Just two weeks later, in the early hours of January 10, last year, violence broke out again.
Helen chose for the first time to call 999 when Lever ‘lost it’ at her son. Claiming he could smell cannabis, Lever stormed into the child’s bedroom, saying “I’m going to f ****** kill you, you c***” before grabbing the boy and throwing him onto the bed.
The youngster hit his head on the corner of the bed and Lever got on top of him, ‘gripping’ him by the throat as the boy pleaded for him to stop.
He then picked up a television, snapping cables, and hurled it at his stepson, who fled from the house, followed by Lever.
At a sentencing hearing at Chester Crown Court on February 15, Lever was handed a 17-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work. The judge also imposed a 10-year restraining order preventing Lever from any contact with Helen, 49 and her son.
When the Express contacted Andrew Lever he said he was ‘desperately sorry’ for what he did but stressed it was ‘eight years ago.’ He declined to comment further.