Our evil parents, by Darwin sons

7:32am Monday 28th July 2008

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THE sons of back-from-thedead canoeist John Darwin have spoken of the deception that tore their world apart – labelling their mother a “lying bitch” and their father “selfish and evil”.

Mark and Anthony Darwin said they hated their parents, who were both jailed for more to be suffering from amnesia.

He was reunited with his overjoyed sons, but only four days later, their happiness disintegrated.

Anthony recalled the moment he learned of his parents’ deception, when photos of them together in Panama were published.

“Not only was he alive, but my mother knew. She had known all along. It was the ultimate unforgivable betrayal.”

Anthony, who lives with his wife, Louise, in Basingstoke, said he was undergoing counselling to help him overcome the ordeal.

He said that while the fraud may have been his father’s idea, he was astonished at the web of lies woven by his mother.

And it is his mother’s lies that eldest son, Mark, 32, said he would find difficult to forgive.

“She kept all his clothes. We thought that was poignant, but he probably wore them all the time.”

Mark, once fiercely protective of his mother, added: “The mother I respected and loved all my life seemed to have transformed into a hideous lying bitch who had gone to outrageous lengths to con us.

“She was such an accomplished liar, she deserved an Oscar.

“He [dad] has been no more than 12ft away from us on hundreds of occasions in their house. He was just utterly cruel, selfish and evil.”

Anthony said he felt “hatred”

towards them.

“I don’t think he came back for us,” said Anthony. “He’s not tried to make any contact since his arrest.”

And Mark said both of his parents fully deserved their prison sentences – John Darwin got six years and three months after pleading guilty to seven counts of fraud and one of dishonestly obtaining a passport.

Anne Darwin got six years and six months after being found guilty of 15 offences of fraud and money laundering.

Mark said: “It seems fitting that they have been sentenced to the same amount of time that we have been lied to.”

than six years last week for an elaborate £250,000 insurance scam by faking John Darwin’s death.

Sitting on the beach in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, where they believed their father had disappeared in March 2002, they said their mother, Anne, had written to them in December, from Low Newton Prison, in Durham, to beg for understanding.

They said it was only during her trial at Teesside Crown Court last week that they realised she was in on the fraud from the start.

In interviews with The Mail on Sunday and Sunday Mirror, Anthony, 29, said: “They were in it together and they deserve the sentences.

“They are as bad as each other. Dad told one nasty lie, disappeared and said he was dead, but she lied for six years.

She was the face of the lies.

“They trampled over our lives for the sake of money.

They have tarnished all the good times that came before.”

Former schoolteacher and prison officer John Darwin, 57, faked his death after getting into financial difficulty.

For more than five years, his sons believed he had drowned after setting off in his canoe from the beach opposite the family home. However, only weeks after disappearing, he returned home and, when visitors arrived, he would slip through a secret door.

Meanwhile, his “grieving widow” was cashing in £250,000- worth of her husband’s life insurance and pension policies.

A few weeks after the couple moved to Panama last October, John Darwin walked into a London police station claiming