You couldn't make it up dept. no.63: a new reason to end up before the beak

[fpb]

What follows is probably very imprecise. I have not been able to find it on any British news site, but it was reported in different forms by two Italian newspapers. This is my translation of the longer report, from today's La Repubblica.
Suzanne Mitchell, 29, married with Charles, 46, and with Caroline, 24, is to be tried for bigamy. The is English barmaid, already the mother of five children, was apparently having trouble with her older husband and felt the need for some affection; so she united herself with Caroline, thanks to the new civil union law... and forgot to get a divorce first.

The two women had their fateful first meeting in a pub. A little while later, after some dalliance, Caroline moved in with Suzanne, while her husband moved to the ground floor of the same house. Last February the two women had their "wedding". However, this rather fragile household did not take much to fall apart.

It is at this point that the two women's narratives diverge, forcing investigators to deal with the first case of lesbian bigamy in the UK since the country introduced same-sex civil unions in 2005.

Caroline declares she was deceived: "Suzanne never told me that she was still married to Charles, nor that she had not even asked for a divorce. I found that out myself a month after we had our wedding. I had even changed my own family name to take hers. Now I have to change it again. She is the one who lied, declaring on the marriage certificate that she was single."

Suzanne, when the police rang her up to notify that she was being investigated for bigamy, tried to defend herself by saying that she was very depresses when she met Caroline, and that her marriage was collapsing. She claimed that Caroline proposed a ménage à trois, but when Charles refused the two women started an affair and then moved in. The lesbian wedding was a kind of game: "It never occurred to me that it was a real wedding. I saw it as a way to state my emotional commitment to her."

She feels now greatly let down, especially since she suspects Suzanne of reporting her to the cops: "I already burned all the photos of our wedding", said the bigamist lady.

And what about Charles? What was his part in this affair? Very little is known about what happened before the police investigation, but now he is defending his wife, stating thate every marriage has its crises, and that Suzanne is being absurdly persecuted.

Suzanne, in turn, declares that all she wants is to divorce Caroline and go back to wedded bliss with Charles: "I can't even imagine why I did it. Actually, sex with her was not even as good as with Charles".

What is certain is that on May 23 Her Majesty's courts will hold the first criminal trial for lesbian bigamy.
.................................................................
Il Giornale reports the name of the spurned lover, Caroline Beddoes, and the place where this is supposed to have happened, Shrewsbury. Interestingly, Shrewsbury, which one would take for the very type of the quiet English country town, has been in the news lately for no less than two gruesome murders, one of which in a brothel; clearly a livelier place than one would imagine.

Comments

[filialucis]

*facepalm*

I. Have. No. Words.

[patchworkmind.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a story arc for Desperate Housewives.

[theswordmaiden.livejournal.com]

I'm off to exciting Shrewsbury.

Seriously ... Suzanne's opinion of this wedding is difficult for me to grasp.

[bufo-viridis.livejournal.com]

There once was an old man of Lyme
Who married three wives at a time
When asked, "Why a third?"
He replied, "One's absurd
And bigamy, sir, is a crime."

– William Cosmo Monkhouse

[wudjuwait.livejournal.com]

'the very type of the quiet English country town'
just my view but they, especially the market towns in the sticks, invariably have a nasty, dark little underbelly. dependending on how well they are connected to the metropolitan areas, alcohol issues are a given, drug use is prevalent in certain groups of society as are it's associated effects. often the services in these places are not geared to deal with arising issues in a joined up fashion, although the situation has been improving over the past 5 - 10 years or so. seaside towns are no less exempt.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I know. One jut has to read what Alan Moore had to say about his native Northampton. And we all know what Sherlock Holmes had to say about "the smiling and beautiful countryside" - and he was right, too. I was dealing in stereotypes - and, as I said, Shrewsbury had been in the news more often than usual, lately.