Woman who was jailed for asking bodybuilder husband to clean the house dumps him for younger cleaner lover
A wife locked up for asking her husband to help around the house has bagged herself a toyboy lover. Valerie Sanders, from Catterick, North Yorkshire, claims all she did was ask 58-year-old Michael to ditch some of his gym sessions, to vacuum and to clean the patio doors.
She ended up spending 17 hours in a cell facing charges of controlling behaviour after two police vans and four officers turned up at her house. After "14 months of hell" in which she didn't know if she would end up in the dock, the trial was thrown out. Following the traumatic experience, the 58-year-old has ditched Michael and fallen for Tony Mableson, a cleaner, who at 33 is 25 years her junior.
Together the happy couple runs a mobile cleaning company. Valerie still took the time to slam her ex's gym habit, which she claimed got between them. What started as a once or twice a week habit when he started work as a gym manager became an "obsession".
We had earlier reported that the woman was thrown in jail for "controlling behavior" after she asked her gym loving husband to clean the house. The 58-year-old said she was “treated like a criminal” for asking her bodybuilder husband Michael to clean the patio instead of spending so much time at the gym. Although the case was thrown out right before trial, she had to spend 17 hours locked up.
Sanders told The Sun, "It's outrageous this ever got to court." She revealed that she had refused to sleep with him because he just didn't spend any time at home and his gyming was getting out of control. "He was training all the time. He was eating five or six meals a day and mushing up all his food in the blender," she said describing her marriage, "We stopped going out for meals. I was working and he was at the gym from early in the morning until late at night. I just didn’t see him. If he wasn’t in the gym he was washing his car for hours," she said.
Her husband had started taking part in bodybuilding competitions. "It wasn’t attractive. It was like cuddling an ironing board. He started to take Viagra because he said he couldn’t get an erection, blaming the steroids. But when he took the tablets it made him sniffy and snotty so I refused to sleep with him," she said.
Sanders, who is the owner of a cleaning firm was persecuted after folks at the Jobcentre alerted authorities because they noticed a change in Michael's behavior. "I was taken to the station and locked in a cell. I’ve never been in trouble. I was horrified. I felt like a criminal. I had my house keys taken away. I had to stay at a friend's mum's," she said. She denied that she had displayed any controlling behavior, saying that if what she had done was a crime every married couple would be in court.
"I'd leave a note asking him to vacuum parts of the house and clean the patio doors. We have two miniature dachshunds. But he would spend four hours cleaning his car – so of course, I complained," she said.
The couple is now divorced and Michael has been granted a restraining order. Michael, however, said that she was indeed controlling. "I'm not sure if she should have gone to court or not. That was not my decision – but she was controlling. She was constantly on at me. She used to leave the vacuum out or the polish and wanted me to clean every day because of the dogs," he said. The couple married in 2014 after meeting online in 2012.