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AFTER SEVERAL BAD RELATIONSHIPS, DEBBIE PIETERS THOUGHT SHE’D FOUND HER SOULMATE. BUT SHE DISCOVERED THAT ANTHONY BATCHELOR HAD A SINISTER SIDE THAT PUT HER AND HER NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR IN GRAVE DANGER

By Claie Wilson

Sitting in a cold police cell, Debbie Pieters tried desperately to make sense of the unfolding nightmare.

Hours earlier she’d happily spent an evening with her boyfriend Anthony Batchelor – now he was being hunted by police.

Kind, gentle and caring, this was the man she had believed was her soulmate.

Now she was being told police had found a sick collection of child pornography on his computer, along with footage of him raping a woman. It seemed impossible to believe.

Debbie had first met Anthony, 32, on an online dating site four months earlier, in May 2007, and they had clicked almost instantly.

“He was good-looking and after sending emails to each other for a couple of weeks we decided to meet up,” recalls Debbie, 38, a hairdresser from Gloucester.

Some may question Debbie’s wisdom when she admits that, just four days after that first meeting, she gave Anthony a key to her two-bedroom terrace home.

“At first it was fantastic. He cooked me dinner and was always giving me cuddles. Even though we hadn’t been together for long, I thought I’d met someone I could spend my life with.”

And it wasn’t long before he was telling Debbie he loved her. However days later came the first sign that Anthony wasn’t all that he seemed.

 “We were sitting on the sofa when he suddenly burst into tears,” Debbie recalls.

“Through his sobs he told me he’d been jailed for three months a few years ago for posting explicit images on the internet.

“He said an ex-girlfriend had reported him for putting indecent pictures of her on the net, but according to Anthony, she had told him to do it.

“He couldn’t stop crying and while other women may have doubted him, I didn’t. I just couldn’t imagine the kind, gentle man that I was sharing my bed with would do such a thing.”

Despite his honest confession, Debbie started to see another side to Anthony.

He began picking rows with her, and after one argument, sparked when money
of hers went missing, he lost his temper and pulled her fingers back, ripping off her false nails.

Shocked and shaken by his behaviour, Debbie told him to leave.

However, Anthony begged Debbie for forgiveness and she gave in.

But in August last year, after she returned home from Anthony’s house, a knock on her front door brought Debbie’s world crashing down.

“It was my neighbour, Tanya Ginter,” she remembers. “To my amazement, she accused Anthony of breaking into her house and stealing her laptop.

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and told her she was wrong.”

But Tanya, 22, was adamant it was Anthony, explaining that when she realised her laptop was missing, she went round her home looking for ways someone could have got in.

As she examined her bedroom, she noticed a small hole, no bigger than a 10p coin, in her ceiling and concluded someone must have been up in her loft.

When she and her boyfriend Simon investigated, they saw a big hole in the wall adjoining Debbie’s attic.

Tanya took Debbie up to her loft and showed her the gap Anthony had made so he could get from Debbie’s house into hers.

Tanya called the police, who arrived and began searching Debbie’s house.

They arrested Debbie and told her she would have to spend the night in a police cell before being questioned the following morning.

She was released the next day, when detectives realised she was completely unaware of her boyfriend’s double life.

A distraught Debbie was told that Anthony had secretly set up a video camera to film Tanya in her bedroom, zooming in on her when she was getting undressed.

He had also gone into Tanya’s house to steal some of her possessions, including underwear and her laptop, which led to his downfall.

“I just couldn’t work out when he had been filming her,” says Debbie. “But then it slowly dawned on me that it was probably when I was out at work.

As the police delved deeper, they realised it wasn’t the first time Anthony had shown voyeuristic tendencies.

They found video clips of other unsuspecting women and children, filmed over the last eight years with hidden cameras in his bathroom and in public changing rooms, as well as child pornography.

Not only that, but detectives believed he was responsible for three rapes.

One video showed Anthony had imprisoned a 17-year-old woman in his bedroom against her will. He threatened to assault her with red-hot hair straighteners before forcing her to have sex with him at knifepoint.

“When the police told me, I was numb,” Debbie says. “It was so hard to take in, part of me thought: ‘Surely they’ve made a mistake?’ But I knew they hadn’t.

“I kept asking myself how I could have let such a monster sleep in my bed and touch my body and not know what he was?”

Anthony pleaded guilty to one rape, false imprisonment, actual bodily harm, trespassing with intent to commit a sexual offence, burglary, three counts of possessing indecent images of children, and voyeurism.

He was given an indefinite sentence at Gloucester Crown Court earlier this month.

Debbie remains haunted by how easily she was fooled.

“All my friends kept saying I was too trusting, but I didn’t listen,” she says. “Now
I consider myself lucky. He could have raped me – or worse.

“I’m trying to get on with my life, but it’s difficult. I’ve begun to feel safer again. I tried dating again, but it was too soon.

“I used to think I was a good judge of character, but I realise I’m not. Now, I don’t know if I could ever trust a man again.”

 

What do you think of Debbie’s story? Should she have been so trusting at the beginning of the relationship? Do you think there would’ve been any warning signs before Anthony’s arrest?

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Photography: Rebecca Bradbury Hair & make-up Carol maye at Mustard Models