Woman arrested for 'nagging' husband to clean the house says she was treated like a criminal: 'I only asked him to vacuum'
A wife who was arrested and jailed for "nagging" her ex-husband to clean the house has spoken out for the first time since the incident and insisted she did nothing wrong to warrant the treatment.
Last April, Valerie Neal was greeted by four police officers outside her two-bedroom home in Catterick, North Yorkshire, arrested, and driven to Harrogate police station, where she was put in a windowless cell overnight, according to the Daily Mail. While she was released after spending 17 hours behind bars, she was subsequently charged with controlling and coercive behavior towards her husband Michael Sanders, an offense that became a crime in December 2015 in an attempt to tackle non-physical abuse in domestic relationships.
Controlling and coercive behavior includes making persistent threats and attempts to humiliate and control, none of which Neal said she was guilty of.
Having married Sanders in 2014, Neal admitted they had been unhappy in their relationship and that she used to push her ex-husband to do his chores around the house. She said she used to hassle him to vacuum the house, complained that he devoted too much time on his sports car and told him to cut down the time at the gym, but it never went further than that.
"If that’s nagging, I’ll hold my hands up to it," she said. "But asking your husband to vacuum is not, in my eyes, a criminal offense."
She said their marriage had started going downhill almost immediately after they tied the knot as Sanders didn't contribute to any of the household work and rarely ever gave her any attention after becoming obsessed with bodybuilding.
"In the beginning, he did the vacuuming but I think he got used to me doing it," she revealed. "I'd say, 'Mike, the black high-gloss furniture attracts dust. Can you just dust?'"
"I said it would be nice for me to come home and have a cup of tea made for me," she continued. "He said he didn’t drink tea — why should he? I said because we were married. I was frustrated."
Fourteen months after she was charged, she was informed that her trial would not be going ahead. A key witness -- a coworker Sanders had confided his marital woes to and who is believed to have been the one who went to the police -- did not show up, and Sanders changed his mind.
Instead, she accepted a two-year restraining order, a decision she said she now regrets. "I wish I’d never taken it. I wish I’d had my day in court," she said, adding that she was too tired to protest.