GhLinks Media
A court in Manchester, England, heard disturbing details about a wife’s experience with her controlling husband.
Lukman Shonibare, 44, allegedly used hidden cameras to spy on his wife, Lyndsay Shonibare, claiming he possessed “spiritual powers” to see her smoking.
This manipulative tactic pressured Lyndsay into signing a contract in January 2020, forbidding her from drinking, smoking, or lying.
The situation worsened after the death of Lyndsay Shonibare grandfather, who resided with the couple, in April 2020.
Lyndsay described her husband’s behavior in June 2020 as feeling like she was “in a torture chamber.”
She was smoking on the balcony outside her apartment following her grandfather’s death while her husband was out, the jury heard.
And when he returned, he claimed he had seen her smoking with his spiritual powers, she said.
She later discovered that he was watching her using a camera which he had hidden in a boxing glove, the court was told.
Lyndsay told the jury her husband told her in 2020: ‘I’m spiritual and I can see these things. I know what you are doing.’
In a statement read by Roger Brown, prosecuting, she said: ‘He threatens me with spiritual power and that he’s higher than another human being.
‘It scares me because of spiritual powers in Africa.’
She added he would ‘drink holy water from Nigeria, but he would always be angry’.
The court heard Mrs Shonibare was gradually isolated from her friends and family, at the request of her husband.
Mr Shonibare married his wife in November 2015 and they had a son in 2016 and a second in 2019.
But the court heard Mrs Shonibare was not given a chance to name her first son because he told her in Nigeria women don’t decide what their children are called.
She said she paid for a baby-naming ceremony to take place in Nigeria, despite wanting to help choose a name for her son.
In a statement read during day one of his trial, Lyndsay said he pinched and slapped her, telling her he was the ‘boss’.
In a statement, she told the jury he once pinched her over 20 times before splashing her face with water so that she couldn’t speak.
She added: ‘My body was really painful from being pushed and pinched.
‘He said he was the boss of me and splashed water in my face.
‘I was too scared of the consequences than following through with getting help.’
She told the court that she went for drinks with work colleagues in December 2014, before her husband reprimanded her for doing so.
‘He said to me that he wouldn’t marry someone like me if I didn’t change my behaviour,’ she told the court from a witness box, ‘and he didn’t want to marry someone who drinks or smokes.
‘I just apologised and said I won’t do it again.
‘It was easier to obey what he said than to go against what he said.’
Mr Shonibare also took his wife’s mobile phone and smashed it, the court heard.
She lost more than 13,000 photos of her children growing up and her late grandparents, the jury were told.
‘I lost everything’, said Lyndsay, ‘my phone was always monitored and he would take it out of the house and delete everything off it.
‘I couldn’t use the phone for myself.’
Police became involved in April 2021, but Mrs Shonibare did not report anything to them until Mr Shonibare had left the home, the jury were told.
In day two of the trial, March 21, Mrs Shonibare was cross-examined.
Defending, Steve Nikolich said: ‘He never stopped you from going to see any of your friends.’
To which she replied: ‘He said that they are all bad influences for me.’
Mr Nikolich questioned Mrs Shonibare’s relationship with alcohol, asking her whether her grandfather’s death had any effect on her drinking, to which she replied that it had no effect.
He said: ‘The altercation of pushing your head into a pillow is a fabrication to cover your drunken state.’
She replied saying this was untrue.
