true crime

Hamish McLaren's ex wife: The 4 relationship red flags Bec Rosen noticed.

On June 20, 2019, serial con man Hamish McLaren was jailed for at least 12 years after swindling more than $7.6 million from people including girlfriends and good friends. He will be eligible for parole in July 2029. This is the story of his former wife, Bec Rosen.

Bec Rosen was married to a criminal.

Her ex-husband Hamish McLaren, 48, has admitted to taking $7.66 million from 15 victims in a trail of destructive behaviour that lasted for years.

Bec was one of those victims, and her three sons and one of their then girlfriends became collateral damage in Hamish’s web of fraud and deceit.

Listen to Mia Freedmans’s full chat with Bec Rosen on No Filter below. Post continues after the podcast.

The Australian’s new podcast Who The Hell Is Hamish? is unravelling Hamish’s lies, and in doing so has unearthed some pretty startling relationship red flags.

Here are the four relationship red flags we’ve noticed while listening to the podcast:

The gut feeling you’re being gaslighted.

In the latest episode released on Friday, Bec describes how Hamish gaslighted her into thinking she was “a lunatic” when she started to suspect he was seeing her teenage son’s girlfriend.

“Hamish and I were going down to the beach. I got to the top of the stairs at the beach and I don’t know what it was about this sight, but I saw Jane* walking down to the water and Hamish leaning on his haunches watching her.

“I felt repulsed. I thought this is not right. I thought this is wrong,” she told the podcast.

“If ever I said anything to him, he told me I was a lunatic. ‘You’re f****** imagining things, Bec. She’s a kid’ he’d say,” she explained.

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hamish-mclaren
Hamish McLaren.

Hamish managed to gaslight not just Bec, but her sons, who became increasingly angry at her suspicions.

"Jack said to me 'you need to butt out of my relationship and stop going on about her and Hamish, she's getting upset.'"

Everyone was telling Bec she was wrong, and she was left feeling suffocated by the suspicions that she couldn't shake.

It turned out Hamish was having a relationship with her son's girlfriend. Bec's gut was 100 per cent correct.

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Mamamia on gaslighting. Post continues after video.

Video by MMC

A disinterest in intimacy.

Despite being blissfully happy in the early days of their relationship, there was always something that made Bec feel a bit weird.

Hamish wasn't interested in sex, or physical intimacy, and when he was - it was odd.

"He was the most clinical person in the whole world. He would want to have a shower before you'd have sex. There was no intimacy in it at all," Bec told the podcast.

"He'd be behind me, not looking at me at all. I don't think I ever had missionary sex with him."

He also didn't want to be touched.

"It was kind of weird," said Bec.

No slow intimacy. No kissing and cuddling on the couch. Nothing.

Bec found herself ticking 'intimacy' off her list as the long intimate chats they'd have late at night.

Too much, too soon.

Hamish knew how to woo, buying bottles of wine and leaving them on Bec's doorstep, doing her grocery shopping, and playing with her boys who were craving a male role model in their lives.

It was hard not to fall in love with him.

Within six months he'd proposed to her, something she'd initially laughed off.

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"He's whole thing was 'No come on I love you, I love the boys, I've never wanted to marry anyone'. The amount of love he showered me with was ridiculous," Bec told the podcast.

Her sons adored Hamish, they'd latched onto him.

They went to the Hunter Valley for a romantic weekend away and he tried it again - begging Bec to marry her.

"I said yes of course, I was stoked," she said.

Her father was wary, Hamish had called asking for Bec's hand, and he warned Bec to think carefully about her decision.

"They were wary from the word dot," admitted Bec.

Cruel body shaming.

Soon after getting married, Bec, her boys, and Hamish took a holiday to Italy as a kind of belated honeymoon.

"It was all about him and his paleo eating. We were in Italy for f*** sake. I want pasta," she said.

Bec told the podcast she'd put on a "few extra kilos" and Hamish would tell her, "You know you could have a really good body if you tried".

He said it while they were at dinner, with her sons.

"I am 40-something and I have had three children," she told him.

"Well look at Elle McPherson - she's had kids," was his retort.

For Christmas, he had given her a bikini and some running shorts - another move Bec realises in hindsight was a hint.

Catch up on today's news with The Quicky.

You can listen to the first four episodes of Who The Hell Is Hamish now.