Man reveals horrific abuse at the hands of his girlfriend
WARNING – DISTRESSING CONTENT: A man who was just days away from death when police rescued him from the grips of his violent girlfriend has told of how he was stabbed, burned, starved and isolated by the woman he thought he loved.
In an eye-opening documentary, Alex Skeel, from Bedfordshire in England, reveals the extent of the abuse he received at the hands of his controlling girlfriend, Jordan Worth.
“She used to say things like ‘I don’t really like the colour grey, I don’t think you should wear the colour grey’,” Mr Skeel, now 22, says in the BBC documentary ‘Abused By My Girlfriend’.
“’Oh I don’t like your hair like that, you should have your hair like this’.
“But I never took it as a negative. It was more like I won’t wear it again – it won’t impress her.”
Mr Skeel and Worth met through friends in 2012 when they were both 16 years old and they quickly became a couple.
However, over the years Worth forced her partner to cut ties with his family, taking control of his phone and sending messages to his loved ones telling them not to talk to him anymore.
She told Mr Skeel his grandfather had died, and after he spent two hours crying and mourning the death, she revealed she had been lying.
Following the intense mental abuse, Worth then began starving her boyfriend, giving him just scraps of food to eat. He lost close to 20kg.
According to the documentary, the abuse turned violent in 2016. Worth would strike her partner with a hammer or any weapon she could find, and would throw boiling water on him as he slept.
On one occasion, after a beating with a hairbrush Mr Skeel was forced to rip out his own tooth as he wasn’t allowed to seek treatment. When he needed urgent care for his burns from the scalding water, Worth also refused to let him have an operation.
He was forced to treat his second and third-degree burns with cling wrap, the BBC reported.
Finally, after neighbours witnessed Mr Skeel’s constant stream of injuries and overheard one of the many violent beatings, police were called.
Mr Skeel was hesitant to reveal the truth behind his injuries out of fear of what Worth would do to him, but eventually he told the officers about his girlfriend’s violent attacks.
In hospital, doctors told Mr Skeel he was 10 days away from death. He underwent operations to his brain, head and hands.
Worth was arrested, charged with grievous bodily harm and coercive controlling behaviour and was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in jail.
“People always ask me, why didn’t you walk away – but it’s so complicated,” Mr Skeel said.
“As each day goes by I’m understanding it more.”
Worth was jailed for seven-and-a-half years in April 2018 after pleading guilty to grievous bodily harm and coercive controlling behaviour.
The prosecution was the UK’s first conviction for coercive control involving a female offender.
