Yvonne Gibney and her husband Maurice Gibney decided to divorce when their 17-year marriage began to deteriorate. Before proceedings could start, Yvonne discovered her husband had already moved on in a big way.
The 55-year-old senior nurse-practitioner conducted a small investigation on Facebook to corroborate rumors of her husband's possible infidelity in February 2014, according to Mirror. The 49-year-old Maurice works as a senior contractor for Oman Oil, earns a tax-free salary of £85,000 a year, and spends much of his time in the Middle Eastern country on the Arabian Sea.
Photos of Maurice cuddling with teacher Suzanne Prudhoe confirmed the gossip, but clicking through to Prudhoe's account revealed much more than a simple fling.
The profile picture for Prudhoe showed the school teacher in a wedding dress kissing Yvonne's husband under a white gazebo on a sandy beach. Further investigation into the Facebook page revealed the wedding had taken place 11 months prior in March 2013 at the British Embassy in Oman.
Yvonne's mother-in-law walked her son down the aisle and her step-daughter served as a bridesmaid for Prudhoe during the £45,000 ceremony. Maurice lied to his family that he had divorced his first wife. He also falsely claimed Yvonne was "crazy" and told his family to cut off all contact with her, according to Mirror.
Maurice pled guilty to bigamy at Wirral Magistrates' Court in Merseyside, England on Oct. 23. The court handed down a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years. Yvonne wished for a harsher sentence with jail time.
"I allowed myself to be manipulated and controlled by him," Yvonne said in a statement. "At the time of the bigamous wedding we had been married 17 years. I believed in our marriage and shared values, trust, love and respect for each other, a sense of morality."
Yvonne met the father of three nearly 20 years ago in Nigeria. The former couple had one son, Sebastian, and Yvonne's older son, Joshua, also grew up with Maurice as his step-dad.
He avoided her throughout the years by claiming he had to make a business trip, or was to "depressed" to travel back to their home in Merseyside, according to the Daily Mail. Last Christmas, Yvonne and Joshua went to visit Maurice in Oman, but he told them he had to do work in the desert. He actually flew 3,700 miles back to the UK to spend the holiday with Prudhoe's family in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, according to the Daily Mail.
"I had no knowledge of Suzanne Prudhoe's existence or relationship with my husband. It appeared she announced her engagement to my husband on Facebook in May 2012," Yvonne said in her statement. "To initiate into that bigamous marriage, my whole marriage became worthless."
The first wife claims Maurice has not apologized or shown any sign of remorse for his actions, according to Daily Mail. He also has not tried to make contact with her sons.
"You initiated into a bigamous marriage," District Judge Michael Abelson told Maurice. "You knew precisely what you were doing at the time you did it, there was no hiding it."
