A SON whose mum left her family to marry a Masai warrior she met on holiday revealed it destroyed his childhood.
Cheryl Thomasgood, then 34, jetted away from her second husband and three children to marry Daniel Lekimencho weeks after meeting him in Kenya.
Cheryl Thomasgood, then 34, left her second husband and three children behind to marry Daniel LekimenchoSolent News
YoutubeThe pair married in 1995 before moving to the Isle of Wight[/caption]
Colin ShephardChery’s son Stevie has broken his silence on his traumatic childhood[/caption]
The couple first lay eyes on each other at the Bamburi Beach Hotel in Mombasa.
Cheryl quickly traded in her suburban life on the Isle of Wight and relocated with the 6ft 2-inch-tall Kenyan warrior – who was ten years her junior.
Her son Stevie Liddington, now 43, has broken his silence on the ordeal in light of his mother’s comments earlier this month.
She explained how she felt used as a “meal ticket” by the Masai warrior and expressed her regret.
But Stevie, who was 11 when Cheryl left, told the Mail he is “ashamed to call her my mother” and “deeply disgusted”.
“My mother did not just abandon her family in the 1990s – she ruined our childhoods,” he said.
“She left behind three children, including me, and never looked back in any meaningful or supportive way.
“She was never the kind of mother who cared about her children’s emotional well-being, and even now, decades later, she continues to show who she truly is by dragging this all up again without a thought for the people it hurts.”
Stevie has relocated with his wife and children to Seoul, in South Korea, and hasn’t spoken to Cheryl in 10 years.
He told how his brother moved to Canada, and similarly has little contact with their mum.
In harrowing tales, Stevie revealed his childhood had been traumatic before Daniel arrived on the scene.
His father, Robert Liddington, had left the home when he was five-years-old, which saw Cheryl spiral into a mental breakdown.
Stevie and his younger brother were temporarily placed in foster care after they “saw things no child should ever witness” – including Cheryl holding a knife to her own neck, Stevie claimed.
He recalled Cheryl’s second husband, Mike Mason, stepping up and giving the family stability.
Cheryl and Daniel welcomed a daughter together in 1998Solent News
YoutubeThe couple went through a messy divorce in 1999[/caption]
YoutubeStevie claimed the turbulent relationship led to physical fights[/caption]
But their happiness was shattered beyond repair with “one phone call” from Kenya – when Cheryl said she was never coming home.
Stevie’s trauma only deepened after the case sparked a media frenzy, which he claimed his mother loved to fuel.
He said: “At school, classmates brought in newspapers to laugh at me. Teachers stood by or laughed along. I was publicly humiliated.
“And where was Cheryl? Chasing cameras. Giving interviews. Writing a book. She didn’t ask how we were. She didn’t check in. Our family crumbled.”
He refuted her expressions of regret and said she’d never taken accountability properly.
The web designer claimed her comments were filled with lies, including the impression Daniel was loved by the kids.
He dubbed Cheryl’s relationship with the warrior as “violent” and “chaotic”.
Cheryl and Daniel welcomed a daughter together, Misti, in 1998.
But Stevie said he was often left to look after his half-sister, when Cheryl would go missing for days.
He recalled praying his mother was still alive, while walking around the local area for hours searching for her.
Stevie revealed Misti and Cheryl are still in contact with each other and there is no bad blood.
His brother, who relocated to Canada, also has an on-and-off relationship with Cheryl.
But Stevie is insistent he must keep the door closed with “narcissistic” Cheryl – who he slammed should “never have been a mother”.
CHERYL’S REGRET
Cheryl and her new partner made headlines across the globe with people left gobsmacked at her decision to abandon the comfortable middle-class life for a new home and partner in rural Kenya.
She traded it in to help the warrior cook, clean and hunt, sleeping on goatskin and surviving on a diet of cow’s blood and cabbage in a mud hut.
But the bizarre couple eventually to leave Kenya behind returned to the Isle of Wight in 1995.
They tied the knot on Valentine’s Day, both wearing traditional Masai clothing.
But more than three decades later, Cheryl has broken her silence after the marriage fell apart – when she claimed Daniel became obsessed with wealth.
She described feeling used as a “meal ticket” in an emotional interview with the MailOnline.
“I made a huge mistake, it was very wrong of me, and I have a lot of regrets, especially about how it damaged my children,” she said.
Cheryl split with Daniel in 1999 just four years after they were married and one year after their daughter was born.
Now, 65-year-old Cheryl lives alone in a seaside town in Somerset where she is well known among the local community.
She has kept her controversial past hidden from the community with none of her friends aware of the bizarre relationship she once had with the Masai warrior.
MARRIAGE BREAKDOWN
Cheryl has now told how shortly after arriving in the UK Daniel became obsessed with material things and money.
She detailed how Daniel quickly became moody and miserable over the couples lot in life, wanting more money and more possessions, changed by life in the UK.
Cheryl recalled the only time Daniel being happy was when the Kenyan warrior was jumping around in the garden doing his traditional Masai dance.
She added: “He would say that he was getting ready for battle and wanted to jump as high as an elephant. The kids loved it, but it got on my nerves after a while.”
Trying to pinpoint what went wrong in the peculiar relationship Cheryl blamed a slew of drastic cultural differences between her and her husband.
She reportedly felt that adjusting to life in the UK was too tough for Daniel and his struggles assimilating, combined with the pressure on the pair to make their relationship work, led to the eventual end of their marriage.
Cheryl admitted that she suffered sexual abuse as a young girl and spoke about the harrowing difficulties she faced growing up in a dysfunctional London household with alcoholic parents, she was reportedly contemplating suicide at the time she met Daniel.
She revealed how she was urged to go on her Kenyan holiday by a friend who was in the same church choir as her, the pair went on the holiday that would change her life forever together.
When Cheryl went to Kenya she was at a low point in her life she said, suffering with childhood trauma and stuck in an unhappy marriage to her second husband Mike.
She had seen Daniel was an answer to her problems, believing he could help her heal and find peace through spirituality.
Cheryl now admits that her love affair with the Masai warrior was just an escape from her problems and not an answer to them.
MOVING ON
Asked about what she regrets the most about her time with her warrior toy boy, Cheryl said: “The impact all this had on my children. Having a Masai warrior as a father was not easy for them. Daniel was trying his best, but he could never understand the Western ways and couldn’t be the dad that they needed.”
Cheryl said that her children had missed out on having a proper father figure in their lives because of her relationship with Daniel and the break down of her first two marriages.
Despite having no contact with Daniel, Cheryl maintained she still has good relationships with all of her children, referring to her daughter Mitsi as “the one good thing” to come out of her and Daniel’s strange and difficult marriage.
Following the pair’s split, Masai warrior Daniel remained on the Isle of Wight where he now works in a supermarket.
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