“She made me sleep on the floor with no covers if things weren’t going her way, as a punishment,” he said.
“I wasn’t allowed to shower or shave, or use the toilet.
“I had to hold it in and try to make it down to the local supermarket or a pub or a restaurant.
“If she wanted to go out, I had to leave, even if I was trying to work.”
Rigby would go through his phone, and tell him not to associate with family and friends, telling him “you are with me now”.
Any texts he sent his mum, he would delete immediately to avoid repercussions.
There was physical abuse, including biting, kicking, scratching and clawing.
He described an occasion in London on a long weekend, when Rigby demanded he buy her a designer handbag.
“We were in Harrods and she said ‘we’re not leaving until you buy me something expensive’,” he said.
“She clawed me through my jumper, my arm was actually bleeding, until she forced me into buying something expensive for her.”
Five months after he moved in with Rigby, things came to a head when he met his mum in secret for a cup of coffee.
“She broke down in front of me,” he said.
“I thought ‘I can’t put my family though it any longer’… they were imploring me to leave.”
Around that time, Gareth made a call to the Mankind Initiative.
It confirmed he was suffering domestic violence – and hearing it from someone neutral helped him understand he needed to get out.
