Ex-athlete put pillow over wife's face, court told

An ex-Olympic athlete told his wife, "you deserve this, you brought this upon yourself", as he put a pillow over her face, a court has heard.

Curtis Robb, 54, is said to have carried out the "unprovoked attack" on his GP wife Sarah after a row on a Lake District family holiday in April 2023, the jury at Chester Crown Court was told.

Months later, Ms Robb told police she feared she was "going to end up dead" if she stayed with him.

Robb, an orthopaedic surgeon who competed for Great Britain in the 800 metres at the 1992 and 1996 Games, is on trial over the suffocation along with claims he was controlling and coercive in the marriage between December 2015 and August 2023.

The prosecution says the two doctors appeared "a happy and successful couple", but Robb had a "dark side" and for many years was physically violent and cruel to his wife.

In her police interview, Ms Robb described how she texted her husband not to wake her up when he returned to their room in the Lake District.

Instead, she said, he walked in with his phone in his hand and cleaned his teeth with an electric toothbrush.

She said: "I said 'I can't believe you have done that, that's awful'.

"He looked at me with 'that face'. He put the toothbrush and phone down. I was lying on the bed and he did like these karate kicks, three or four times."

The kicks did not connect, she said, adding he then "pulled the pillow out from under my head and put it over my face".

She said: "I can't remember for how long.

"I started to feel I couldn't breathe.

Ms Robb added: "He threw the pillow on to the bed and then got everything from the bedside table and threw it to my face – my phone, my book, my notebook, my eye mask.

"I couldn't move, I froze. I have never retaliated.

"It was like, 'Don't do anything and it will be quicker'."

Ms Robb told police she was also punched on the arm "four or five times".

Asked how hard the punches were, she replied: "It was full-on. He is an orthopaedic surgeon for a living. He is using strength.

"He is an ex-athlete. He is a strong person.

"It was full-on power."

"He said to me, 'You deserve this, you brought it upon yourself, you never know when to leave it'.

"I was terrified. The whole incident was, 'You are going to end up dead'.

"He had done similar things before but he couldn't stop himself. What's next?"

Ms Robb, also known as Sarah Caddy, said the incident, which she described as a "completely unprovoked, brutal attack", gave her "clarity".

She told detectives: "I was literally consumed by fear, by absolute fear, about what he was going to do next.

"Over the years, he would say, 'You are mentally unstable, you are autistic, you need to see a psychiatrist'. I used to believe it. I don't any more.

"I would always say, 'You want a doormat as a wife and I am not a doormat'. But, looking back, I probably was."

She compared her husband to "Jekyll and Hyde" and said she had to "filter" what she said around him.

She added: "There has never been any remorse when he had physically assaulted me. [He] never once said sorry."

The trial continues.

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