'Wicked' wife who inflicted 'utter domination' on terrified husband of 38 years by poking him with knives, enforcing house rules and pulling hair is jailed at Portsmouth Crown Court

A ‘WICKED’ wife who subjected her husband to ‘humiliation’ by goading him as ‘half a man’ while poking him with knives and pulling his hair like a ‘schoolground bully’ has been jailed.
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Battle-axe Glenys Downie ruled her marriage with ‘utter domination’ to leave her 67-year-old husband constantly ‘walking on eggshells’ in fear of the violent tyrant wife he had been wedded to for 38 years.

The 65-year-old was jailed for two years at Portsmouth Crown Court for her campaign of terror.

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Glenys Downie has been jailed for two years at Portsmouth Crown Court after being found guilty of coercive control. Downie was also given an indefinite restraining order.
Picture: Hampshire ConstabularyGlenys Downie has been jailed for two years at Portsmouth Crown Court after being found guilty of coercive control. Downie was also given an indefinite restraining order.
Picture: Hampshire Constabulary
Glenys Downie has been jailed for two years at Portsmouth Crown Court after being found guilty of coercive control. Downie was also given an indefinite restraining order. Picture: Hampshire Constabulary
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The remorseless dictator’s actions also saw her separating her husband within the household, handing down house rules, stopping him seeing friends and family, and making him feel ‘disgusting’ over his cleanliness.

Wearing her wedding ring in the dock, stony-faced Downie looked down her nose for much of the sentence hearing before being led away to begin her stint behind bars.

Iron-fisted Downie had carried out her coercive control – which she failed to accept but was found guilty of by jurors after a trial – in her Swanwick home from August 8, 2019, to September 26 last year at Walpole Lane, Swanwick.

Judge William Ashworth said: ‘You intended to humiliate and degrade your husband. This is from the repeated ways in which you put him down describing him as “worthless” and “half a man”.

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‘Much of your behaviour had elements of schoolground bullying - with you antagonising him. And because he refused to defend himself you goaded him and used his failure to fight back to use as further evidence of his worthlessness.

‘There was such a gap between the two of you – with you holding all the strings in the relationship. He was without any say and did not have any ability to decide matters.

‘The relationship became one of utter domination.’

In a statement read out to the court, the abused husband said of his wife: ‘She made me feel as if my life was nothing and I was sub-human.

‘She made me feel as if I was disgusting and unclean and subjected me to poking me with knives and hitting me in the face and pulling my hair like a child.

‘I was in constant fear of her violent outbursts.’

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The complainant said how the relationship had ‘not been good for some time’ before matters plummeted in 2019 as he was banned from seeing friends and family.

The pensioner said how ‘one of the happiest times’ of his daughter’s life as she was due to get married became a ‘nightmare’ after the ‘torture’ Downie put them through. ‘Glenys’ wickedness was overwhelming,’ he said.

Both daughters testified against Downie during the trial.

The husband said he was now ‘slowly recovering’ but confessed he ‘won’t get back the two years she stole from me’.

He added: ‘I no longer walk on eggshells every second of the day.’

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Edmund Wild, defending, said Downie ‘clearly maintained her denial of events’ but was ‘sorry to be (in court)’.

The barrister said jail would only ‘increase’ her ‘suicidal thoughts’.

But judge Ashworth decided prison was appropriate due to her having ‘no remorse’ or ‘prospect of rehabilitation’.

‘You drove him to lose two years of his life so you will serve two years in custody,’ he added.

Downie, now of Durn's Road, Wotton-Under-Edge, Gloucestershire, was given an indefinite restraining order.