Man forced to live in car to escape violent and controlling girlfriend

ruby orimba

July 19, 2018 4:36 PM

She would hit him and bite him then ask for forgiveness and swear not to repeat

A man claims he has been forced to live in his car to escape the violent and controlling ex-partner he moved to be with.

Robin Cozens, 59, moved to England from the U.S. five years ago after he met the woman online playing poker.

But he says the relationship started to sour when the woman – who Mr Cozens has not named – threatened to send intimate pictures of him to his boss, and allegedly began biting and hitting him and checking his phone and bank statements.

Rock bottom

Now, Mr Cozens – who says he is at ‘rock bottom’ – says he is telling his story to warn others about the signs of domestic abuse, and the dangers of meeting up with strangers from the web.

After meeting playing online poker, the pair started chatting regularly and after a few months their friendship turned into something more.

Mr Cozens claims alarm bells started to ring when the woman threatened to send intimate pictures of him to his boss in the US when he refused to come to Hull to see her on one occasion, but he just put it down to the fact she wanted to see him so much.

Blossomed

As their relationship blossomed, Mr Cozens left his engineering job in the US and made the decision to make the permanent move to Hull.

He said: ‘We used to have such a good time together at first, but then it started to change. ‘She would regularly check my phone and ask me where I was and who I was talking to all the time.

She even put the location on my phone so she could see where I was. ‘She didn’t believe me when I said I was doing the grocery shopping and she would check my bills and open my bank statements as she would accuse me of sending money to another woman back in America.’

Mr Cozens also claims the woman was violent towards him. ‘She would hit me and bite me. Then afterwards she would say she was sorry and that she would get help and never do it again,’ he said.

ruby orimba