Christopher Trybus trial hears alleged physical and sexual violence drove wife to take her life
Prosecutors told a jury that christopher trybus subjected his wife, Tarryn Baird, to a sustained campaign of physical and sexual violence and coercive control that left her feeling she could not escape and led to her taking her own life.
Charges and the start of the trial at Winchester Crown Court
Christopher Trybus, 43, is charged with the manslaughter of his wife, two counts of rape and coercive and controlling behaviour. He denies all charges. The trial opened at Winchester Crown Court on Tuesday, with one account stating the trial started on Tuesday, February 24.
Prosecutors told jurors that Trybus's behaviour towards Baird escalated in the two years before her death and that the alleged sexual violence included two rapes in late 2016.
Allegations of rape after a dispute over school fees and other assaults
Prosecutor Tom Little KC told the court that one alleged rape followed an argument about whether Trybus would pay school fees for Baird’s cousin, and that Trybus had tried to strangle his wife before forcing himself on her. The prosecution says there were two rapes and other sexual assaults during the marriage.
The court heard an allegation that Trybus struck Baird around the head with a phone and strangled her to the point she passed out.
Medical visits, bruising and accounts to a doctor and a charity
Baird, 34, visited her doctor on numerous occasions in the months before her death and eventually told medical staff and a domestic abuse charity that Trybus had been violent. In October 2016 she told them he had tied a rope around her neck.
In November 2016 she told her doctor she had tried to leave but that Trybus had hit her with a metal pole. In January 2017 she told her doctor he had attacked her with a metal bar, punched, kicked and dragged her along the ground and had strangled her with a belt; the doctor noticed bruising and friction burns on her body.
Control, monitoring and thwarted escape attempts
The court heard Trybus installed an app on Baird’s phone so he could monitor her whereabouts and on one occasion queried how long she had spent at a GP surgery. Prosecutors say he limited her access to finance, threatened to reveal private information to her family, isolated her from her family and used threat and fear of physical and sexual violence, even from abroad.
Baird made detailed plans to escape to a women’s refuge a few weeks after some of the alleged attacks, but the prosecution says those plans were foiled when Trybus, described in evidence as a software developer, returned early from a business trip. She expressed concern that any involvement of the police would make things worse, not better.
Diary entries, marriage, the suicide and the prosecution’s case
The jury was read diary entries in which Baird described a change in her relationship: one entry recounts that “one night, during sex, I felt his hands around my neck. Something was unleashed that night. Progressively, sex got rougher. The more I fight back, the more he enjoys it, ” and she wrote that this was “a side” of her husband “that has been hidden all these years. ”
Baird and Trybus married in 2009 and the court heard the couple had moved to the UK from their native South Africa two years earlier. Baird worked at an opticians. She was found dead at her home in Swindon, Wiltshire; she died by hanging and was found on 28 November 2017. The prosecution says Trybus is legally responsible for her death.
Tom Little KC told jurors: “We ask you not to lose sight in this case of how she would eventually take her own life by hanging. ” Little described a catch-22 in which Baird felt that staying would mean continued violence and control, while leaving and making a complaint might not lead anywhere and could place her at greater risk.
Baird left a note that read: “To my family, I am so sorry but I just couldn’t take it any more. I know you may not understand this but I just can’t explain the dark cloud that is over me. ”
