It was March 2016 and Helen Gundry and her then 15-year-old daughter Daisy thought Daniel – Helen’s husband, Daisy’s father – was away for work in Dubai.
They were excited to move from their home in Surry in the UK to join him in Dubai and start a new life together as soon as Daisy finished her final-year exams.
Then, sitting on the couch one night, Helen saw Daniel on an episode of Saturday Night Takeaway.
He was there, where he should never have been, in footage of a surprise wedding shown live on SNT. He was with another woman, Susan Brooker, and he was meant to be in Dubai.
“Things were great. We had our plans, Daisy was enrolled in college out there and we had an apartment out there,” Helen told This Morning. “Or so I thought.”
Although Helen and Daniel, 39, had separated for a time – and she knew of his relationship with Susan in the years they were apart – their marriage, she thought, had rekindled and his affair with Susan was over.
He had told Helen he “wanted to be a family again”.
She posted to the SNT Facebook page at the time: “I loved the wedding and the surprise guests. I didn’t love the sight of my husband who’s supposed to be working in Dubai arriving on the arm of another woman. A woman he’s supposed to have split from last year. We have a 15-year-old daughter and she’s in absolute bits.”
But watching her husband with another woman during prime-time television was only the beginning.
Only a week ago, the three women had to watch a man they once loved – who they thought loved them – be sentenced in a criminal court for bigamy.
Daisy, now 18, said she “collapsed there and then” when her father was handed down a six-month prison term.
“He’s given me a lot of issues in my own life that I need to focus on getting over as well,” she told This Morning. Indeed.
The ‘other woman’ Susan was also a victim of Daniel’s deception.
She and he were married in a ceremony on Seychelles – a “white sandy beach in the middle of the Indian ocean”, according to a tourist website. And the court heard how Daniel forged paperwork in order to go ahead with the wedding.
Susan had no idea he was married to Helen and both women teamed up to report him to police.
This is why happy people cheat… Post continues below.
The court heard victim statements from both Daniel’s ‘wives’, the BBC reports, with Helen saying she is suffering with depression and Susan saying her life “is going in slow motion”.
“He has been lying for a long time so I’m just glad that finally he’s been found out,” Helen said after the sentencing.
The judge said Daniel had caused the women “embarrassment, shame and humiliation” before handing down the six-month sentence. The maximum penalty for bigamy in England is seven years.
In Australia, the laws are similar. Bigamy is illegal in all states and territories and, according to the 1899 Criminal Code, a person commits bigamy if they:
- Are married, but goes through the form of marriage with another person during the life of his or her wife or husband;
- Or if they go through the form of marriage with any person whom he or she knows to be married.
Obviously, there are divorce courts for a reason. And the only circumstances in which a marriage can go ahead while one party is still legally married, is if there’s been an absence or separation of more than seven years.
In 2004, the Howard Government defined marriage as: “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.”
Obviously, thankfully, after the 2017 survey on the issue, marriage no longer needs to be between a man and a woman. Marriage equality is here!
The “exclusion of all others” part, however, might need to stay.
Top Comments
From what I understand bigamy used to be quite common. due to low availability of divorce & often the stigma that was attached to it 50-60+ years ago.
I had a friend whose father was put into jail for 7 years when he was 6 months old, (about 65 years ago) his father was an itinerant railway worker, so him & his Mother struggled financially throughout his childhood, this explains why such a long sentence makes no sense, really who was the bright spark who thought that sending the main breadwinner to prison for 7 years helped matters, especially for families that lived in the country.
I agree with the Judges observation highlighting the availability of divorce & surely he would have be able to avail him of this prior to getting married again.
I find it awful that he thought that a) his "real" wife wouldn't find out b) that it wouldn't have any effect on their daughter or the rest of the family. I just hope this man realises the gravity of this type of situation & the damage that it causes. Both women I would suggest are going to have issues around trusting men (in general) again. I would suggest that he is an exceedingly weak person who sounds like he may have issues around being honest with people he "loves," and also the capacity to express what he really wants. I would suggest the lengths he went through to achieve this bigamous "marriage" was more about pleasing either the second woman/or if there was any $$$$'s attached to this deal with the reality tv producers, which may have been an incentive. The fact that he would go to those lengths that he did to make a whole story up around what was happening is incredible. This also suggests that they also need to be far more careful in their vetting process when lining up prospective contestants for these type of shows, especially getting a print out of any previous, or current legal relationships. I just hope this "man" realises the damage that he's caused & hopefully it doesn't happen again. I do believe that the last line in the article around, "The “exclusion of all others” part, however, might need to stay," this is the part that many men in my friends early days obviously struggled with, I can't see from this guys efforts that much has changed. This I would humbly suggest is obviously the most important promise in the wedding vows, that some people have issues with, at some stage or other. Still to this day.