Gran of four Beth Haining has spoken out about her African lover who she wed in 2015 after meeting him online, claiming she spent £18,000 on him before she realised she had been "gullible."
The 68-year-old considered herself internet savvy and said she used to laugh at women falling for good-looking toyboys.
A few months after the pair met, the first request for money came – and Beth, who had taken a shine to him, felt obliged to agree.
She sent him £200 and then, £2,000 for some studio equipment, and despite the 40 year age difference the pair got on.
Beth had been to Ghana before as she had worked as a volunteer at orphanages there and felt obliged to fly out to see him.
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She said: "I should have known better.
"I used to laugh at women falling for good-looking toy boys from abroad and think how gullible and silly they are. Now I’m one of them.
"We had a mutual friend and both loved music. Rodney was a producer, working with some big names in Ghanaian music.
"I was a bit lonely as my sister Gaynor had died a couple of years earlier and my mum had been diagnosed with dementia. But Rodney was very friendly and chatty. We got on well."
Adding: "I thought we were friends, but he started saying I had nice hair and he couldn’t wait to touch it.
"We’d seen pictures of each other and there was a huge age difference – he told me he was 40 – so I didn’t realise he was flirting at first."
Beth flew out to see Rodney in 2015 and described the sex as "magical" before he arranged a surprise wedding for the pair.
She said the musician gave her "butterflies" when he gave her a "full-on kiss" at the airport and spent her time in Ghana "eating out, drinking, meeting his friends."
Five days later, the day before Beth was due to fly home, Rodney shocked her with a wedding and Beth "felt like she couldn't say no" as all his friends and family were jeering.
Beth said her horrified children begged her not to go through with it after she broke the news to them on the phone.
She said: "I knew they’d try to talk me out of it. They weren’t happy.”
"When I saw his date of birth I realised he’d lied about being 40 and really he was in his 30s. I was a bit shocked but it was too late."
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Beth flew home the next day and paid a lawyer £3,000 to arrange the spouse visa Rodney needed, which was finally granted in 2017.
The mum-of-two realised "everything was a lie" almost immediately and said Rodney "didn't stop moaning.
She said: "He spent more time sleeping on the sofa than he did in my bed.
He would argue about everything – the food, the cold and having to find work in a packing factory.
"He said, ‘How can you be broke when you’re British?’ He thought this was the land of milk and honey.
“My children and friends didn’t like him. I thought it was a culture shock and he’d adapt. Eventually I realised it was all a lie."
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After Beth decided to leave Rodney, he kept begging for another chance, buying her flowers, before finally agreeing to leave.
She gave him the money to fly home and the taxi fare to the airport and filed the £1,800 for divorce.
Beth said: "Now I just want to get on with my life without him.
"I keep asking myself how could I have been so stupid as to be taken in by him. I thought it could never happen to me, but I fell for it all."
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Beth’s daughter says she had reservations about her mum’s toyboy husband – and didn’t like him from the start.
Mum-of-three Sasha Haining, 47, said: “I was shocked when my mum rang me two days before her wedding to say she was getting married.
"I told her, ‘You can’t. He’s a lot younger than you and no one knows anything about him’.
"But she said he was nice. Obviously, he was going to be nice because that’s what you do when you’re trying to woo people.
"I didn’t like him from the moment I met him.
"I thought he was arrogant and rude. The first time we met him he went off and didn’t speak to anyone.
"We thought he was after her money straight away."
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