A man claims he has been forced to live in his car to escape the violent and controlling ex-partner he moved to Hull to be with.

Robin Cozens, 59, moved to England from the U.S. five years ago after he met the woman online playing poker.

But he says the relationship started to sour when the woman – who Mr Cozens has not named – threatened to send intimate pictures of him to his boss, and allegedly began biting and hitting him and checking his phone and bank statements.

Now, Mr Cozens – who says he is at ‘rock bottom’ – says he is telling his story to warn others about the signs of domestic abuse, and the dangers of meeting up with strangers from the web.


Robin Cozens, 59, is living in his car to escape his violent and controlling ex (Picture: Hull Daily Mail / MEN Media)

After meeting playing online poker, the pair started chatting regularly and after a few months their friendship turned into something more.



Mr Cozens claims alarm bells started to ring when the woman threatened to send intimate pictures of him to his boss in the US when he refused to come to Hull to see her on one occasion, but he just put it down to the fact she wanted to see him so much.

As their relationship blossomed, Mr Cozens left his engineering job in the US and made the decision to make the permanent move to Hull.

He said: ‘We used to have such a good time together at first, but then it started to change.

‘She would regularly check my phone and ask me where I was and who I was talking to all the time. She even put the location on my phone so she could see where I was.

‘She didn’t believe me when I said I was doing the grocery shopping and she would check my bills and open my bank statements as she would accuse me of sending money to another woman back in America.’

Mr Cozens also claims the woman was violent towards him.

‘She would hit me and bite me. Then afterwards she would say she was sorry and that she would get help and never do it again,’ she said.

‘I left on many occasions but she would always manage to get me to go back saying her grandchildren missed me,’ he added.

The couple met playing online poker (Picture: KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)

Mr Cozens said things got so bad that the woman would turn up at his place of work to check he was there and used to hide in rooms at their house when she said she had gone out – apparently trying to catch him doing something she didn’t like.

He said: ‘If I had been on long 12-hour shifts and had a day off she would come in the next morning and tell me she was going to work.

‘I would get up as normal and watch television and other normal things and then she would just appear out of the other bedroom and make up some excuse about not feeling well. There was another time when she had hidden in the under stairs cupboard and claimed she had fallen asleep there.’

Mr Cozens, who says he is suffering with depression and was forced to leave his job, now wants other people to be aware of the signs of domestic abuse.



Despite sleeping in his car until accommodation can be found, he says he is determined to get his life back on track.

‘I feel its important to speak out about what has happened to me. People meet other people online and get to know each other and think everything is great, but you don’t really know that person and that’s when things start to fall apart,’ he said.

‘I don’t want women like her to think they can treat people like this and get away with it.’

By way of advice to people in similar situations, he said: ‘There is support out there if you need it. And, don’t go back. They say they will change, but they never will.’