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speakup

A provincial court judge has heard from both sides of a broken marriage that allegedly turned violent.

The couple’s two sons, 16 and 14, will take the stand when the trial resumes April 21.

Judge Fred Ferguson will then decide whether a man who found out his wife was cheating really choked her, threatened to kill her and attempted to keep her from leaving their home.

Todd Malley, of Old Ferry Road, stands charged with assaulting his wife, uttering threats on Oct. 10 and confining his wife in their home against her will on Nov. 14. In the courtroom he sat with their daughter.

Kim Malley, his wife, said the whole event was a blur to her. Crown prosecutor Jack Walsh put her on the stand first. She spoke of the choking and the threats as though they had happened on the same day. It wasn’t until police notes were read that she recanted.

She could not recall the date of the first incident, but testified on the day she told her husband she didn’t love him and wanted a divorce, infuriated, he pushed her on the couch and choked her.

In early October, Kim Malley told her husband she was having an affair. A couple of days later, she said, her husband questioned her further on the topic and said he would call her boss, believing it was someone at work.

When she revealed it was a man she met on the Internet, she said he pulled a knife from the kitchen drawer, holding it to his neck and stomach and saying he would kill himself and, “I could kill you.”

The next day she went to the police and filed a statement and Todd Malley subsequently signed an undertaking, saying he would not initiate contact with his wife.

At a later point, however, she moved back in to be with her children. Then, on the day she decided to leave for good, Nov. 1, her wallet and laptop went missing. She said she believed her husband hid them, but he denied it.

On Nov. 14, while staying with her grandmother, she said she received a call from her son at work asking her to pick up some cough medicine and bring it to him after school.

When she arrived at the residence, she said her husband answered the door and told her the boys weren’t home. Instead of going inside, she said, she tossed the bag of cough medicine through the front door and walked back to her car.

“He said we should talk,” Kim Malley said, but he grew angrier as she walked away. She said he followed her and tore a silver chain off her neck.

“I was getting scared. I wanted to leave. He grabbed me and pulled me into the house.”

Kim Malley showed the court how her husband grabbed her coat collar and dragged her inside while she said she tried to reach for something to grab on to.

“I kept thinking, once I get in there, I’m not going to be able to get out.”

She said in the house he blocked the exit with his body, there was an altercation, he grabbed her and she ended up on the floor.

She eventually got up, she said, and escaped through the kitchen and out the back door.

She said after she reached her truck, he tried to gain access, but the door was locked, so he pounded his fist on the hood of the vehicle as she drove off.

Const. Jennifer Cahill of the Miramichi Police Force took pictures the next day of bruises on Kim Malley’s arms and a dent in the truck she described as being fist size.

Defense lawyer Craig Silliker asked Kim Malley why she went to the police on Oct. 25 to see if she could withdraw the charges. She testified she hadn’t even remembered asking and couldn’t remember why. Police reports by Const. Lisa MacFarlane showed Kim Malley had asked to have the charges dropped, but gave no reason and the request was never followed through.

Silliker also asked her to recall when her husband had surgery on his shoulder. She said she couldn’t remember, but thought it was sometime in October. He asked whether she saw him wearing a cast.

“From time to time,” responded Kim Malley, but added she could not recall whether he was wearing one during the time of the alleged incident.

Todd Malley took the stand in his own defence.

He said while he was shaken by hearing his wife was having an affair, he never did any of the things she accused him of. He testified he never even saw his wife on Nov. 14. He claimed he was at the school with his kids at the time she said she stopped by, and when he got home there was a bag on the front stoop containing cough medicine for his son.

During cross examination, Walsh pressed Todd Malley on his reaction to hearing his wife had an affair, asking him if he was angry with her. Todd Malley refused to use the word angry.

“I was upset,” he said.

Todd Malley claimed he had done nothing to his wife the day she accused him of taking a knife and threatened to kill himself.

Walsh asked if he hid her laptop and wallet, which were eventually found in the back of a closet.

“It wasn’t me,” said Todd Malley. “It could have been one of the boys.”

“You’re being cute with us, Mr. Malley. You are just playing games here,” said Walsh. “You were making her angry, throwing gas on the fire, just like you are right now — being cute with your words.”

“I don’t think so,” Todd Malley said.

The couple’s sons will testify in their father’s defence. Todd Malley told the court his sons were his alibi for the Nov. 14 incident.

Time constraints on Wednesday did not allow the court to hear their testimony.