A man’s use of “physical and sexual violence” to control his wife led her to take her own life, a court has heard.
Warning: This story contains descriptions some readers may find distressing, including references to suicide.
Christopher Trybus, of Swindon, Wiltshire, is accused of the manslaughter of Tarryn Baird, who died aged 34 in November 2017.
The 43-year-old also faces charges at Winchester Crown Court of controlling and coercive behaviour, and two charges of rape.
The coercive control charge alleges he controlled Ms Baird through both using and threatening violence, sexually assaulting her, monitoring her whereabouts, limiting her access to finance, threatening to reveal private information to her family and isolating her from them.
Tom Little KC, prosecuting, said he carried out “extensive and escalating controlling, coercive and manipulative behaviour, including sexual violence of two rapes and other sexual assaults”.
He said: “It took place over a sustained period of time behind closed doors and all of it during the course of a marriage.”
Mr Little said Trybus controlled “many aspects of their relationship” even when abroad, by using the “threat and fear of physical and sexual violence”, which led to a deterioration in her “already weakened mental state and a cause of her deciding that she should take her own life”.
“She had not managed to escape from him, despite seriously considering doing so on a number of occasions,” he said.
“However, we say that constricted by his control she could never go through with leaving him, no doubt fearing the consequences if she would try to do so, and instead she stopped his control over her in the only way she felt she could by taking her own life.”
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Baird was ‘struggling with mental health’
The couple, who are both from South Africa, moved to the UK in 2007 and married in 2009, Mr Little said.
He said Ms Baird had been diagnosed as possibly having PTSD after witnessing and suffering from armed carjacking incidents in South Africa.
The prosecutor said she told her GP in May 2016 she “occasionally felt life was not worth living” and by August was “struggling with her mental health”.
He said a “tsunami” of incidents built up and Ms Baird repeatedly contacted an employee at Swindon Women’s Aid (SWA) and her GP.
When she was offered spaces in a refuge, she turned them down, but later, when she went on to repeatedly seek a place, she was unable to find one.
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‘This is gaslighting’
Mr Little said Ms Baird told her GP Trybus had raped her on 19 October 2016 after an argument over the defendant paying for her cousin’s school fees.
He said: “He grabbed her wrists and had sex with her against her will and also hit her around the face with what she believed was a phone.”
Ms Baird told the SWA worker her husband had “strangled her, causing her to pass out”, Mr Little said, and she blamed herself because she had told the defendant she wanted to leave him.
“That is gaslighting in any ordinary sense of the word,” Mr Little added.
Trybus is alleged to have raped Ms Baird a second time in November 2016.
Baird ‘wanted to escape domestic violence’
Mr Little said Ms Baird made an attempt to kill herself on 19 September 2017 and told her doctor she had “wanted to escape the domestic violence”.
He said Ms Baird reported struggling with her mental health at the end of September 2017 after she was told by police no further action would be taken in a complaint against her husband.
In November 2017 she had reached a “very low ebb” and told her doctor “she has had a terrible few days with her husband and he has been extremely violent, hitting her with an object and she had to protect her head”, Mr Little said.
On 28 November, a day after an ovulation test showed she was potentially pregnant, Ms Baird told a GP she had “constant thoughts” of suicide and still could not find a refuge place.
She was found by a police officer after a call to 101, Mr Little said.
Trybus denies the charges.
The trial continues.
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email [email protected] in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK
