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A prison reform chief jailed for subjecting her husband to 20 years of humiliating abuse and assault went on to steal her best friend’s partner that allowed her to live in her home.
Businesswoman Caroline Grant recounted how Sheree Spencer drank glasses of wine at 7 a.m. and spent her evenings drunkenly flirting with her man, Adrian Taylor.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Caroline said: “When Sheree’s marriage broke down, I was the only person who supported her and she thanked me by stealing my partner.”
Spencer, 45, was jailed for four years for making her husband Richard’s life hell with daily beatings and verbal attacks that left him curled up on the floor in a fetal position.
A judge called her shocking treatment of him during their marriage “the worst case of coercive and controlling behavior I have ever seen.”
Businesswoman Caroline Grant (pictured) recounted how Sheree Spencer drank cups of wine at 7 a.m. and spent evenings drunkenly flirting with her man.
Sheree Spencer, a mother of three and a heavy drinker, was locked up for four years after making her husband Richard’s life hell with daily beatings and verbal attacks.
Caroline, 46, initially turned a blind eye to Spencer’s chemistry with Adrian, 52, a baker and father of Caroline’s seven-year-old daughter.
She said: “From the moment she arrived at our house, she and Adrian were drinking together and acting like a pair of giddy teenagers towards each other.”
“Although alarm bells sounded, I was sure nothing would happen after giving him a home in his time of need.
‘But Sheree only cares about Sheree. He seduced Adrian right under my nose.
Caroline met Spencer, a high-ranking official in the prisons and probation service, when their daughters became friends at school outside York.
The girls had play dates and their mothers became friends. But Caroline was shocked to discover that she was the person Spencer turned to when her marriage to her husband Richard, 46, came to an end.
Adrian Taylor (pictured) was seduced by Sheree Spencer
Unbeknownst to Caroline, the police were investigating Spencer for her gruesome treatment of Richard, which included hitting him with a wine bottle, scratching him, punching and kicking him, and forcing him to clean up after she had defecated on the floor.
Caroline, a specialist in relocating families moving from one area to another, knew only that Spencer and her husband were separating.
She said: “When I finally realized what I had been doing to Richard, like everyone else, I was horrified.” But by then she already lived in my house and was settled.
In July 2021 she told me that she was going to stay with a friend because she and Richard had broken up. She said it wasn’t a particularly good situation because she had to share a room with her friend’s son.
I invited her to spend a night at Adrián’s and my house, but it turned out that she would end up spending months with us.
She blamed Richard, the poor man whose life she had ruined, for the separation, saying that he had falsified the evidence that had gotten her arrested.
‘I believed everything he told me. It’s hard to describe how incredibly plausible she is, she’s a skilled liar and I believed what she said.
‘The first night she was here, she and Adrian started drinking wine and ended up together. It should have been a warning sign from the start, but I couldn’t see it.
Spencer settled into Caroline’s large townhouse on the outskirts of York. She worked from home in her high-flying role as project manager in the strategic development department with HM Prisons and Probation Service.
It was a role that brought her into contact with the highest levels and the government and she bragged about her meetings with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Ella Caroline said: “She told me she worked two and a half days a week for a salary of £55,000, which was an incredible waste of taxpayers’ money because she spent her days getting drunk.”
‘I saw her one morning with a jug of wine at 7 am. This was supposed to be a work day, but she spent her days lying in bed with a bottle of wine, it’s amazing that she held down a publicly funded job.
“He did it by telling a sad story about the breakdown of his marriage, but that was far from the whole truth.”
Spencer was jailed on February 24 following proceedings at Hull Crown Court.
Pictured: Richard Spencer, who was abused by Spencer.
Caroline and her father, Gerry Grant, 76, who lives with her, began to suspect that Spencer and Adrian were getting too close.
Caroline said: ‘They spent their time getting drunk every night. They liked to sit in a room in the garden that we have, which we call The Cabin, and they would get up cursing and shouting and laughing long after I had gone to bed.
I knew my father was starting to have worries, but I told myself that none of them would do such a thing under the roof of our family home. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“It’s such a betrayal, I even gave her the master bedroom to make her comfortable.”
Gerry said: ‘I started to feel that something was up. I would see them sitting together under a blanket and it seemed to me that they were getting amorous.
‘I told Caroline that I had my suspicions about them, it just didn’t seem right. She was loud, she swore and drank all the time and she tried to get him to loan her £12,000 for legal fees. I was about to, but I’m glad I didn’t.
Caroline’s suspicions were further aroused when Spencer began sharing details of her dealings with the men.
She said: ‘Sheree told me that she had cheated on Richard on numerous occasions. She liked going to Leeds and hanging out with younger men, that was her way of having fun.
She also said that she had had an affair with a married man who helped her with money.
Spencer stayed with Caroline until October 2021 when she was finally arrested and for the years of abuse towards Richard.
At this time he moved into a house in Market Weighton, East Yorks.
Caroline said: “I was asking Adrian if he and Sheree were having an affair and he denied it despite spending so much time in his new home.” “People will think I was naive, but I’m a trusting person and I believed him until he finally said to me just before Christmas: ‘Yes, we’ve had an affair and I’m in love with her.
He moved out on Boxing Day 2021 and moved in with Sheree. It was as if she was some kind of trophy on her arm, she had introduced her to her family shortly after she had moved on completely.
“We had been together since 2014, but he had fallen for Sheree and despite living in my house, she had reciprocated.”
The only satisfaction Caroline can get from the time Spencer spent with her is that a member of her family meted out summary justice: her rooster, The Godfather.
She said: ‘The best man hated Sheree from the start and attacked her every time she left the house. On one occasion she fell off her and he flew towards her, kissing her head.
“That satisfies me a bit, The Godfather is clearly a better judge of character than I am. I’m lucky to have gotten rid of both of them in my life and my daughter and I and my dad are very happy together in our house.
Adrian accompanied Spencer to the hearings at Hull Crown Court which culminated in her imprisonment on February 24.
The court was told that she had subjected Richard to abuse weeks after their relationship began in 2000 and continued until she was forced to leave the family home when the police became involved.
On one occasion she defecated on the floor and forced him to clean it and on another she hit him with a bottle of wine so hard that it disfigured his ear forever.
When he went to get help at the hospital, she forced him to register with A&E under his brother’s name under the threat that he would not be allowed back into the family home if he defyed her.
In furious wine-filled rants, she called him ‘fat boy’, ‘ap***y’ and ‘dummy dummy’ and gave him bruises and scratches that he needed to cover up with makeup before heading out.
For years he secretly recorded videos and audios of his wife’s attacks on him and when the police got involved he handed over 43 images of his bruised face, taken on different dates after the savage attacks he had suffered.
Judge Kate Rayfield told Spencer: ‘On one of these recordings, it’s clear that he had defecated on the floor. Her husband can be heard scrubbing off her as you tell her, ‘I made you do that, all I asked you to do was go to the store.’
I watched you spit in his face over and over again and call him ‘bitch, you little idiot and slut and insult his family members.’
‘You whispered in his face in the most sinister way, yelled demands and instructions: ‘Put the damn chicken in, go to the damn store’ and warned him ‘you will learn’.
The judge added: ‘By his actions, he intended to humiliate or degrade Richard and has caused him significant psychological harm. Richard Spencer was a vulnerable victim, isolated from his family and financially trapped.