Messages sent by Charles Hanson are ‘confessions’ to charges, prosecutor claims
The Bargain Hunt auctioneer’s trial was told WhatsApp messages provide a ‘clear window’ into his relationship with his wife, Rebecca Hanson.
WhatsApp messages sent by celebrity auctioneer Charles Hanson to his wife amount to a “set of confessions” to the charges against him, the prosecutor at the TV star’s coercive control trial has claimed.
In his closing speech to jurors at Derby Crown Court, Crown counsel Stephen Kemp said the messages, including one in which Hanson promised to never again “lay a finger” on his wife, Rebecca Hanson, provide a clear window into the true nature of the couple’s relationship.
Bargain Hunt and Antiques Road Trip presenter Hanson claimed earlier this week that he was “almost a slave” to his wife, who left him “a beaten and broken man” by controlling him and making him subservient to her.
He also claimed he had literally tapped out “every word she wanted to hear” about “lost temper, anger management and ‘completely my fault’”.
The 46-year-old, who told jurors his wife was allowed “to do what she wanted” and falsely accused him of having athlete’s foot, denies charges of controlling or coercive behaviour over a 10-year period, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and assault by beating.
Addressing the jury during the Crown’s closing speech on Wednesday, Mr Kemp alleged that the account given by Hanson, of Ashbourne Road in Mackworth, Derby, “stretched credulity beyond any reasonable limit”.
The barrister read a series of messages to the jury, including one in which Hanson said he would change or he would “have to walk”, and another in which he offered to attend an anger management course.
A message sent by Mrs Hanson said she was fed up with Hanson grabbing her, with others adding “I have had enough” and “I shouldn’t be scared of my husband. They are meant to protect you not hurt you.”
Mr Kemp told the jury: “You are going to have to work out where the truth lies. In working out where the truth lies you are going to have to decide who has told you the truth and who has lied.
“Because I am afraid it is as stark as that in this case, isn’t it?
“If Mr Hanson has lied, I suggest it is pretty obvious why he would do so.
“If Rebecca Hanson has lied to you and to the police, I suggest it’s rather difficult to understand why she would do so.”
Mr Kemp submitted that Hanson had made a “rather belated” and “desperate” assertion that Mrs Hanson was looking for a divorce, when she was trying to save her marriage as recently as June 2023 by pursuing counselling through Relate.
Addressing the WhatsApp messages put before the trial, Mr Kemp told the jury: “You have got an awful lot of them.
“Those messages, I suggest, reveal an awful lot about what was going on at the time – what had just been done, what had just been said, what people, particularly the sender, were thinking at that time.
“And they were sent without anyone thinking that years later they might be used in a trial like this.
“They, I suggest, provide a clear window into the true nature of the relationship between Charles and Rebecca Hanson.
“It is clear, I suggest, that he was admitting to just the sort of behaviour that is alleged against him in this trial.
“Mr Hanson is a man who could not and did not control his temper. A man who, when he got angry with his wife, grabbed her. A man who realised that it was his behaviour that was at fault.
“A man who realised he had no excuse or justification for what he had done.”
Mr Kemp said of the messages sent by Hanson: “There really could not be a clearer set of confessions than that, could there?
“And yet he would have you believe that when he said all this he didn’t really mean it.”
Defence KC Sasha Wass is expected to address the court on behalf of Hanson later on Wednesday, with the judge completing his summing up in the case on Thursday.
