How I abandoned a devoted husband and three kids within six months of meeting a charmer.
By Ayo Salami-UK
It would be another eight years before she found out the truth about the lover she fell for.
Besotted Ann knew him as Chris Trent – but he was really Leslie Andrews, a PAEDOPHILE who had tricked police and his family into thinking him dead.
Andrews was accused of abusing a girl and wanted to escape the law. Just like Reggie Perrin in the TV sitcom, he vanished after leaving his clothes, car keys and a suicide note on a beach.
As Chris Trent he then spent eight years on the run.
But they finally caught up with Andrews, 54, and he was convicted of 14 charges of indecent assault against the youngster.
The news about the man who had won her heart came as a thunderbolt for Ann, 55.
She recalled: “He was totally, utterly convincing. He was a liar, a cheat, a manipulator and a deceiver but the truth was he could charm anybody he met.
“I was horrified when I found out the man I had spent years with was an abuser. I was physically sick when I found out.
“How can you trust someone fully again once you’ve experienced something like that?”
Flattered
Ann was married to former policeman Peter and had three grown-up children when she met Andrews as he worked as a chef on a caravan site in Filey, North Yorks, in the summer of 2002.
He had done his flit from a Lancashire beach that May.
Ann said: “We had a couple of caravans on the site that we rented out and spent quite a lot of summer weekends there.”
At first Andrews made a play for the couple’s daughter Gemma, 21. Ann said: “Chris, as I knew him, was paying Gemma a lot of attention and my daughter was becoming smitten.”
Worried about her friendship with the 6ft 6ins chef, Ann confronted Andrews. But he told her: “It’s not your daughter I’m interested in, it’s you.”
She said: “I was flattered. He was tall, dark and handsome but I told him I was married and nothing could happen.
“We all remained friends and when the holiday season ended at Filey we helped fix him up with some work on another site where we had a third caravan near Hornsea in East Yorkshire.”
By December 2002 Ann’s marriage was in difficulty – and Andrews made his move on her.
She said: “I wasn’t happy. Peter was a devoted husband but something had changed for me.
“I started to feel old and frumpy. I looked in the mirror and wondered where that bubbly outgoing person I once was had gone after bringing up the kids.” When Ann had a bust-up with her husband in December 2002, Andrews encouraged her to take a short break in Hornsea.
She said: “Chris sorted out accommodation for me with one of his friends then persuaded me to take a job in a care home. Before I knew it I was living there.”
Within weeks they had slept together and were sharing a flat. She said: “He was telling me what I needed to hear. He told me I was still desirable, showering me with attention, taking me dancing and for nights out.
“I was so vulnerable at the time I believed everything he said.”
Andrews was growing in confidence with his new identity after abandoning his wife and two children, from separate relationships, back in Blackpool.In the summer of 2003 he convinced Ann to take out a £16,000 loan to set up a restaurant in Hornsea called Charleston’s.
Andrews persuaded her to put everything in her name because he had no bank account, no passport and no driver’s licence.
Ann said: “He told me hisex-wife had wiped him out and closed his account. He explained his passport and driver’s licence by saying he had left her in a hurry. He got away with so much because he kept many of his stories close to the truth of his former life. He confessed he had a wife and two kids to different relationships and it all sounded so convincing at the time.” Andrews also guarded his secret by managing never to visit a doctor or dentist.
Ann said: “Once the emergency doctor saw him but he never registered with a practice. He didn’t have a dentist either.
“I once found a pay packet from one of the caravan sites he worked on and it had a national insurance number on it. I’ve no idea whose that would have been.”
Charleston’s restaurant was such a success that by the end of 2003 the couple were running a franchise at a hotel in nearby Skipsea Grange.
Bookies
They employed six staff and arrogant Andrews was so cocky he started dishing out red roses to female customers and flirting.
The local women were charmed but his relationship with Ann went downhill as he became addicted to gambling and began stealing from the business early in 2004.
He started taking cash from Ann’s bank account. When she found out he was gambling she was forced to hide money around their two-bedroom flat. She said: “I heard rumours he was always in the bookies when I wasn’t around. I hadn’t had a statement for a while and when I checked with the bank there was hardly anything in the account.
“When I confronted Chris he was so sorrowful and promised to fix things. But he never did.
“Wherever I hid the money he always found it. Even when I hid it in a tiny purse sewn into our bedroom curtains.
“I don’t know why I put up with it. Every time I confronted him he’d be so very sorry. I threw him out a few times and once even gave him £1,000 to go away and start a new life. But he kept turning up like a bad penny.
“I was so tired and confused. I thought he came back because I meant something to him.
“I had nobody to talk to about it. Nobody would have believed me anyway. Chris was so convincing and so liked in Hornsea that I felt I couldn’t complain. All the women fancied him and the men thought he was successful.
“I also felt foolish. I’d made a massive mistake and didn’t want to admit it.”
Ann finally broke free of Andrews in the summer of 2005 when he started seeing someone in the town behind her back.
She said: “It was just a huge relief to be rid of him at last. I suspected he was with someone and called his mobile to say I know what you are doing and don’t bother coming back.”
Caught
He had a relationship in Hornsea with Linda Harvatt, 28, but they split up after a few years and he left the town. Andrews was finally nailed in Wakefield, West Yorks, in May last year after police arrested him on suspicion of theft. Preston Crown Court heard how the former cafe owner vanished without trace at Lytham St Annes in May 2002 after a young girl accused him of abusing her. A jury found him guilty and he is still awaiting sentence.
At the trial the girl, who was not named, said: “He was not man enough to admit his guilt and did a Reggie Perrin.”
Ann found out only after his arrest last spring. Her son sent her a newspaper which had a report all about his disappearance.
She said: “I saw his face and read the allegations and I felt ill. I remember being physically sick at the thought that I’d ever had anything to do with this man.”
Ann has since moved to Turkey to start a new life away from the scandal. She said: “I can’t believe I threw away everything for a man with such a disgusting history. I lost my marriage and a daughter who has barely spoken to me since I went off with the man she was smitten with.
“I’m ashamed and embarrassed by everything that’s happened and Andrews’s past makes me feel ill every time I think about it.”
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