“You should go on Plenty of Fish, you need a man,” a friend jokingly encouraged Jennifer. The then 36-year-old was working as a Patrol Manager at Centre Parcs at the time, and was loving her life.
Joining the dating website out of curiosity, she would get ‘randomers’ messaging her. Then she received a message from Jonathan Mealing: “Hi, how are you?”
Little did she know this was the start of the next three years of hell. After being convicted at a trial of offences of rape, controlling behaviour and sexual assault against three women, Mealing, of Welbeck Close, Whitefield, was this month jailed for 30 years.
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Now, his ex-wife Jennifer has waived her right to anonymity and spoken to the Manchester Evening News about her ‘living hell’ and how she’s since got her life back.
Before
In 2016, single mum Jennifer was living in her hometown of Bedfordshire. Surrounded by friends and family, in a job that she loved and a size 18-20, she was content, bubbly and enjoying her life.
Upon receiving Mealing’s introductory message, she was surprised as he was four hours away in Manchester. ‘Why would anyone message me from Manchester?’ she thought.
Initially ignoring his message, she replied a day later, and so began their fraught relationship. “After that, that was it. I would get phone calls, messages.
"He paid for my train ticket to go up and see him. He was the nicest bloke, he was like Prince Charming,” Jennifer said.
“One night he’d paid for dinner and said he had this great job as a builder. Little did I know he was on benefits.”
The couple would see each other on weekends, travelling on the train backwards and forwards. He told her his 'wife' had died from a cancerous brain tumour. “I felt sorry for him, at the time my mum was dying from cancer,” she said.
By January 2017 Mealing told Jennifer he had found her an ‘amazing job’ with more money - the only catch was that it was up in Manchester. “I told him I couldn’t live up there because of my daughter. She was going through her GCSEs at the time and she didn’t want to move,” she said.
“She said she didn’t mind me going and said she was happy staying with my parents. I couldn’t start the job for two weeks, and so I moved up to Bury and from there he got me under his spell.”
During
The moment Jennifer moved in with Mealing into his bungalow, his controlling ways began to surface. He would constantly check her phone, he took her bank card to ‘manage her finances’ and began restricting her contact with friends and family.
“He went out to get something and asked to use my bank card - I said he didn’t need to do that. He never gave it back. From there I had no phone or bank card,” she said.
Four hours into her first day at her new job, she got a phone call from Mealing, telling her to make up an excuse to come home. Jennifer said: “He rang me and he told me if I didn't get home he would put my stuff outside. It's a fair walk from Prestwich to Bury and he said he didn’t need to pick me up.
“I said I couldn’t just leave and he said ‘tell them your mum is dying’. She was as she had cancer. But he said ‘no, tell them she is dying dying and you have to leave’.
“I said I really enjoyed it and liked having a job. And he said it's either leave the job or have no home. I didn’t know what to do, I was stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. From then, I didn’t have a job. “
Things got worse at the bungalow. Jennifer had a close relationship with her daughter, describing them as ‘best friends’. They could call each other to catch up on their day and she would often go down to Bedfordshire to visit on the weekends.
However, Mealing became angry at this, to the point that he restricted their calls to 6pm only on a Wednesday and Sunday, to last for 10 minutes and to be on loudspeaker whilst he was in the room. “From 8 weeks old I was her only parent, we were best friends and he destroyed it,” she said.
“I thought that I didn’t want to upset him because I’ve got nowhere to go. My daughter couldn’t contact me on Facebook as he’d deactivated it. Nobody could get hold of me, nobody.
“He would message my friends and family and tell them I didn’t want to speak to them ever again. I lost a lot of friends and family.”
Mealing controlled her diet, limiting her to a measly four cubes of chicken, two spoonfuls of rice and just water to drink. She dropped a huge amount of weight, plunging to a size 6-8.
“He dished it up, because I needed to lose weight. He bought me gym equipment which I had to use and he put it in the garden so he could watch me from the bedroom as he didn’t want to be with a ‘fat blob’.
“I wasn’t good enough, I was ugly. I started to believe I was worthless and that I had nothing going for me.”
Jennifer was repeatedly raped by Mealing, during the day and night. Minshull Street Crown Court was told of one incident where she woke up to him having sex with her whilst she was asleep. When she asked what he was doing he told her to ‘shut up’ as it was her ‘duty’.
“All he did was smoke and drink coffee and I was his slave,” she said. “I had no identity. I used to wear makeup but I wasn’t allowed to. I had natural blonde hair but he bleached it to platinum white, twice a week.”
In November 2017, Mealing forced her into marrying him, falsely telling her it would help him get in contact with his family. Then, sadly, Jennifer suffered from a miscarriage - after which, Mealing blamed her for the loss of the baby and subjected her to 'evil' bullying about it. Throughout the relationship he was violent with her when he didn’t get his way.
She said she tried to leave him three times, but he always had a way of ‘getting back into her head’. “He would say ‘I’ll change’ - I was silly, I believed him. He never did,” she said.
She fell pregnant again a short time later, and after a difficult birth in which she required major surgery, Mealing raped her again. This was the final straw. Jennifer left and returned to Bedfordshire where she lived with her parents and children.
Months later, he turned up at the house during a supervised visit, threatening to take the child and making threats to kill her daughter. “He looked at me with those certain eyes. He had my son in his arms and the baby was screaming. My daughter said ‘John, can you stop shouting and leave, you're making the baby cry’. He told her ‘why don't you shut your f****** mouth. I will come to college, put you in the boot of my car and you will never see home again’.
After
The next three years saw yet more emotional turmoil for Jennifer, who was hounded by Mealing on social media and on phone calls before he moved onto his other two victims. During that time she had requested for information under Clare’s Law, which took 36 weeks to come back.
It was only during the sentencing hearing that she learnt of his previous conviction for domestic violence, dating back to 1993.
Speaking of the impact of the last three years, she said she was scared when he was served the prosecuting papers and 'locked herself away'. “I am lucky I got out, otherwise I would have been six feet under," she says. "He would have killed me. I lost all confidence and self esteem. I was running around like a robot. He had everything, my bank card, marriage certificate, driving licence. I was a dead person.
“Before I met him, I was qualified, I had a degree - luckily I've been able to go back into my dream career. I was nothing, I was just this thing that cooked, f**** and cleaned - that’s what he used to say. It was a whole different life.”
“He went from Prince Charming to the most evil monster ever. I hate him. I had rose-tinted glasses at the time, I couldn’t see the bad.”
After leaving Mealing, Jennifer said she was running on two hours of sleep a night. Every time she closed her eyes she was taken back to that bungalow.
She has since got her life back, and feels like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She said: “That was the start of closing Pandora’s box. We went back to the bungalow after he was sentenced, it was dirty and looked like an old man’s bungalow. It didn’t hurt me to be there anymore.
“On my mum's deathbed she said to me ‘you've got to get out or you're going to be dead’. I wasn’t even allowed to grieve for her when she died. He would say, choose family or choose me, and I chose my family. And he didn’t like that.
“I had a rough time getting out but I made it. I look at my life today and it's amazing. I wake up everyday with a smile on my face. I never laughed in Manchester, I never smiled, I was just dead.”
Now, Jennifer has met a new partner who has supported her throughout the whole process and she has never been happier.
“I don’t know where I would be without my family and my partner. We’ve not had one argument. He tells me I don't need to change for him and he loves me the way I am.
“Because that monster drummed it into me that he could have any woman, that I was nothing, I was worthless, that stayed in my head. I was with him for four years and it's a long time to be told that.”
Jennifer is now an ambassador for Stepping Stones, a charity based in Luton, which is dedicated to empowering women who have suffered from domestic abuse. When asked what she would say to others in a similar position, she said: “I would say get out, get a good support network behind you, go on those freedom courses. I was just lucky I had a support network behind me.
“When I would tell someone I was raped I felt dirty. I felt that was my duty, I was married and he could do that to me. Then a police officer told me that’s wrong. If I said no and he didn’t get off - it means no. Just find someone you trust to talk to - it could save your life.”
“If any woman could read this and see they’re going through something like this, if I can save one life, that gives me peace of mind and I’ve done it for the right reasons. My monster is behind bars now. I was living in hell. I will never let anyone do that to me again.”
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