How I was abused by my ex, Bluetones frontman Mark Morriss

I would catch my husband cheating on other women and flirting with them. He used to say this: “You were aware of my job before you got married.”

His job was to be the lead singer in a Britpop group called The Bluetones. His name is Mark Morriss.

Although I’ve never mentioned him, I’ve spoken online about my ex-husband. Although I’m aware of the difficulty in putting us together, He is named now because I believe it’s important to protect other women.

He has been telling lies about me and making people believe I’m crazy for too long. His method of convincing women to believe his lies was to gaslight them, persuading them not to see the whole picture and realize he’s a serial predator, pathological liar, and narcissist.

This is not a lightly used word and I will be proving why. However, I will begin by saying: Mark, I don’t know what you are talking about. You can only claim defamation when it isn’t true. 

Unfortunately, this is the sad reality of life. We have witnessed this in cases involving serial predators such as Weinstein and Noel Clarke. It was when multiple females joined together that the newspaper could run the story.

I have been a journalist my entire career and so I understand that need to secure evidence, but all that happens when you refuse to listen to one woman – when her voice is drowned out by her perpetrator – is that other women become their victims. When you collude with a man, it is like being part of the problem. If you don’t hold the perpetrators of the abuse against women to account, then you become complicit.

It is easy to disregard someone as a bitter ex, it is a trope men have relied on for centuries to get away with their crimes – because it works. If you feel that this man shouldn’t be exposed, let me know.

So, let’s get started.

Anna Wharton (right), has written a powerful essay about how Mark Morriss of The Bluetones abused her physically, mentally, and emotionally. The photo shows her with two other women, both of whom claim to have been victims of Morriss’ deceit

Mark Morriss, frontman of the Bluetones, said the accusations of gaslighting and abuse are ‘wholly untrue’ and he ‘refutes them completely’. Pictured: On stage at Kew 2017

Mark was my husband when I first met him in August 2011. Our love blossomed and we were able to get married quickly. My ovulation was plotted and we purchased folic Acid. He had an already-three-year-old boy whom he loved and wanted to be with me.

He told me that I should have an abortion when I was pregnant. He left me when I refused. Although I won’t bore you with the details of their nine years together over the next nine, I will relate one incident that happened when I was very pregnant. 

While I was in Cornwall with my sister and shopping for baby clothes along with his mom, I received a call from a friend who was a journalist on The Daily Mail. 

My friend lives in Godalming. His wife was on holiday from Winchester with her friend at Winchester University. This university friend’s neighbor also decided to join us. Portugal I think. And once there she told a shocking story of how she needed that holiday because she’d been seeing a guy for the last three months who had been ‘f*****g with her mind.’ 

She felt bad for him because he claimed that this six-month-old woman turned up at his door, telling her that he was her father.

She told fellow travelers, “You may have heard about him,” “His name was Mark Morriss.”

Mark used this tale to lure women since then. This is the reason why I shared this anecdote. This story is a common theme. Narcissists are obsessed with making others their victims.

It is enough to say that our relationship was rocky due to his cheating. He made horrible things of me by telling my mum I had tricked him to get pregnant, and telling other people I was bipolar. This was so he would not believe that I was lying. Another thing these men do is discredit the victim to make people forget her.

I was able to forgive his indiscretions and love him wholeheartedly. Although I was aware he had been cheating all his life, I wanted to be with him, just like so many other women.

He was always surrounded by fans. He met women at gigs. He said that he had split up with them. To get their sympathy, he told them the whole “she fooled me” line. Hepathy is a word that I just learned the other day. Six weeks after his marriage, he had been in bed with another fan.

I was also abused by him on multiple occasions. He was finally cautioned by police for throttling me, only because I took a photo of the eight fingerprints around my neck – what a thing you should have to think of straight after an act of violence like that, but otherwise I would never have been believed. Although he had been confronted by police in the past, he kept telling them that I was lying. It was his word against mine, and… well, you know who people tend to believe, the perpetrator who said he didn’t do it. It would be, doesn’t it? To quote Mandy Rice-Davies.

Mark would be an unruly tyrant at our home. After a weekend of shows, he’d return to check on the house. Anything to scare me. If he didn’t see a drop of dust, I would accuse him of lying about my cleaning. The situation got so bad that I used to polish the back door of my front door before he came up the stairs. Cleaning wasn’t what was important, it was control. It was the same with all men.

In 1996, Mark Morriss, Adam Devlin and Scott Morriss were among the Bluetones’ members. In her essay, Ms Wharton calls Mark Morriss a “narcissistic and pathalogical lie”.

It was not always this way, or else I would have never been with him. Although we may be happy together, it was impossible to live a true life. There were many more lives that he was living behind our backs.

So now, let’s move on to the other parts which I believe will convince you to believe my story.

Many women contact me. My comments on Twitter are what they recognize. I have my own page. Let me now share some of their messages. They don’t want him to be abusive and aggressive to them, so I won’t change their identities. For legal purposes, I have all of the names and evidence.

Let’s take this fan as an example: “I was only involved for a few months with your ex. That was a long time ago. He told me that his ex had a daughter with another woman so it might be helpful to work out the chronology. I found it embarrassing that I got to chat with him at one his gigs. I felt a little honored by all the attention, even though I was not a fan. That made me feel very ashamed. Whilst thankfully I never saw any physically threatening behaviour from him, I definitely did feel like his behaviour was odd and a bit manipulative at times and it did leave me feeling pretty s**t about myself and left me with just a little bit more evidence that I end up being attracted to men who aren’t very respectful to me.’

It made me sad to see women blaming themselves.

Let’s take a look at another message. ‘I was completely taken in by his charme and wit. I was very young, naïve and impressionable, and I bloody loved him. It hurts to think that I was only one of many. This man is an evil one. It’s a snake. It’s also a form abuse.

Here’s another: ‘I wanted to reach out because unfortunately I know Mark, and was, at one time, in a very f****d up ‘relationship’ with him. This was years before he had met me (I believe), but it hasn’t been too long since for me to feel the effects. It was just to let you all know that at least one other person understands the kind of man he is. The term narcissistic is not even close. His picture is in fact part of the DSM classification for narcissistic personality disorders. His character is one of the most vile.

Here’s another: ‘Just wanted to wave and say hi as another victim of his bulls**t…After months of texting all night, every night, we met last summer and he immediately started to slag you off, I’d no idea of the situation but any man slagging off his ex is always profoundly off putting…’

Yes, he had admitted to her that I tricked him into getting pregnant. It seems to be his MO to paint himself as victim, to tell these women how I tricked him into our gorgeous, clever, funny, now nine-year-old daughter, as part of his seduction technique – it doesn’t seem to matter to him that this changes how people see her. Unwanted child. It’s not true.

This last sentence is significant because it occurred last year, after I had reunited. I haven’t yet told some friends that I gave him another chance. It was embarrassing. However, the problem with abusive men is that they can make your life miserable. They will force you to leave. I took them back in May 2019. You can imagine that our daughter was happy to see her family again, and she had an amazing year. It was a great thought.

Mark Morriss on the stage in 2018 with The Bluetones. Ms Wharton received messages from fellow women who shared the same experiences as Morriss.

Mark lived multiple lives while the rest of America remained in their homes and stayed with their families in 2020. When I asked him why he removed his wedding band to perform zoom gigs, he answered that you couldn’t use a guitar while it was on. When I pointed out that other guitarists did, he told me to put my dinner in some Tupperware and f**k off out of his house.

We had split up and I didn’t want us living together again after we were reunited. It was so painful. My first instinct was to think that we should have separate homes. So it was a surprise when, in June 2020, I went to his house for breakfast. He opened his door and let us in. However, he then revealed to me that he was sleeping with another woman. It was a devastating moment for our daughter because he denied our existence – our family – for the benefit of this woman cowering under his bedclothes.

And that was all. This duplicity was obvious and clearly enjoyed by him. He answered the door in that morning’s morning. Were we allowed in because he had to? Because he was so excited about the possibility of being caught.

Here is his text message to me at 8pm the night before: “It would have been good for me if your understanding of my feelings about having a woman in my life, and not doubting or accusing me. You do it because it is absolutely devastating to me. We’re always going to disagree on things, and fall out about things…. That’s normal. It’s how you come together again that matters. We’re good at this. It’s a different thing to constantly defend myself against crimes that I haven’t committed. I wish you could understand how much I love you….I don’t want anybody else.’

It is sick that he composed that while waiting for a woman to arrive at his home. There is no other word for it.

That was the end of us, finally.My daughter was broken and I focused on healing her heart. He was a man of many emotions. She made black-and-white pictures and labeled them “Daddy’s Soul.” His hands had taken so much from us..

It was Christmas 2020 and I discovered that Mark had been involved with another woman. Single mother of two kids. I’ll be more specific later. It was hard for me to feel sorry for her. She was carving the Christmas turkey, and she had these photos of her with him, just one and three children, on Instagram. Evidently they loved him. My family and friends felt terrible for her, which I will keep secret. Although I could not have reached out, she needed to know who he was. It hurt that she didn’t tell me, as I felt like I was complicit in the violence she was experiencing. My only option was to do what I had always done: continue to advocate for women’s right, share my story, and pray that she will find me when and where she needs.

Mark asked me to bring our daughter laser tag a couple of weeks ago in the October half-term. Because it is unusual for Mark to take his daughter along, I inquired who. He replied on email, saying it was with his friend Ian and his wife, and their two children – two girls, in this instance. My antenna was raised because I had been trained to hypervigilant by Ian’s bad behavior. My daughter came back to find that Ian couldn’t come, he was sick, and the dad of the girls wasn’t what he claimed. My daughter had questioned her father who had told her he’d never said Ian, that she must have been mistaken – he was now gaslighting her. When I phoned him, he responded that he had sent an email about Ian to me. But that didn’t make sense of the story he told me about Ian. It was because he was a friend from school and had his 50th anniversary on the same date. His mum was also staying at my house at that time and we looked at one another.

She stated, “I don’t think I remember Ian as a schoolfriend.”

“Me neither,” I responded.

He was doing something I suspected, and worse, my daughter was complicit. She was excited to meet these little girls. There was also talk about’step-sisters.

I messaged his girlfriend through Instagram, asking if they knew that he went to laser tag together with the other woman and their two children. She did not. I messaged the other woman to ask if she knew anything about her boyfriend’s girlfriend, her son, and her daughter. As it turned out, she didn’t. They met and they got in touch. Although he was already seeing one of the two in January 2020 it took her 18 months before she introduced her girls to him. He had been seeing the other mother-of-two since March 2020. The last thing I promised was that I would return to was that it was a woman that he was seducing around April/May/June 2020. Keep in mind that he had been married to his wife, me, for the entire time.

He had, predictably, seduced them all with this story that I had tricked him into our daughter – on each first date, in fact. They also sympathized with a new line that he said, stating that HE was the victim of my abuse. The song was even written by him and he has given interviews to promote it. His criminal record is his fault, and it is me who took refuge at a domestic abuse charity. He is disgusting for having made everything he had done to me into something he did. This is how he gained the trust of vulnerable females. He stole my story.

The two moms who were single discovered Mark is living a double existence with them over the past 18 months to two decades. He has also been known to have had relationships with other women during that period. Also, remember that he’s sleeping with other women. Their health is at stake.

This is what the one who wrote it to me was: “Hi Anna! Looks like I owe a huge thank you.” You put me and ******* in contact and it turns out, probably as no surprise to you, that Mark’s been living a double life…. There are no words that can describe the shock at discovering all this was a fabrication.

Here’s the woman who first met Mark, March 2020. Our paths crossed during lockdown, when we met up on a zoom conference with mutual friends. After the call ended Mark found me via Facebook and sent me an email. After exchanging numbers, we started to text. We started texting slowly, with only a few daily updates at the beginning, and then we began to get more frequent. Because I was single and had two children, it was slow and cautious. I also experienced a terrible relationship with my ex. My vulnerability was obvious and that I had to keep things moving slowly. He was considered. He came to my June birthday party. He was charming and met some of my friends. At midnight, he kissed me and said that he was only here to do one thing. He stayed for the whole night. He promised that he’d be back on the next night.

“He did not because he was on a zoom gig” and he was “too exhausted”. But, he returned to work the following night. And again. The lockdown on the original was just recently lifted. However, regulations were still in force. He visited my home three to four times a week. He ate dinner at my house, and I took his bins. He was very friendly with my kids. He would put my children to bed and buy them presents. My kitchen table was his favorite place to be, and we would listen to long hours of music together. He also told me stories. His crazy ex-wife, an evil woman intent on ruining his life. Stories about how much he loved his children. They were his world.

I was so sure that we were happy. Through the autumn and winter 2020 we continued to learn about one another, learning more, and growing closer. He was funny, charming, and kind. He was charming, funny and a good listener.

“But her crazy ex-wife always resurfaced as a motif. Her access was difficult, unreasonable and cruel. Because he wanted to be able to see his child, he took her to court. Secretly, I would look at her Twitter and see that she seemed so composed and calm. I would then turn my back to my friends, shake my head, and say, “Poor Mark!” However, even that time I was unable to accept his story. Because I couldn’t believe that any mother could act so horribly, I sought help from a therapist.

His Christmas was spent at my home. We were safe, it wasn’t lockdown. He carved the turkey and I opened stocks together. My daughter got barbie dolls and my son toys trains. His gifts were thoughtful, humorous, and perfect. Although we were meant to bring his daughter along, his wicked ex-wife changed our plans and kept her away. He spent New Years’ with me, and we went zooming together. To the friend who had introduced him, he wrote: “Thank you so much for welcoming her into our lives. It’s the most wonderful gift that I could ask for.”

We were together for over 18 months. He started to gig again and we saw less each week. However, I would still go with him on the road for gigs. I had the opportunity to meet his venues managers, promoters and his friends. We attended dinner parties together. Together, we went to country houses weekends and took trips to the Lakes. To celebrate my 50th birthday, he brought me to Brighton. In October, he turned 50 and we hosted a party at his house for all of his close friends and bandmates. His girlfriend was me, and I was thrilled.

‘But I’d never met his children. His ex-wife was still an issue. And every so often, there would be a little niggle – who was this fan? Is that the message? Then, one day everything went out of control. I received a message from his ex-wife, in which she attempted to inform me that he was now seeing another woman. I had already introduced him to his children. It was a fierce loyalty that I displayed immediately. It was rejected by me. I looked at the other woman’s Instagram – there was nothing about Mark – it was fine, he was telling the truth.

‘He wasn’t. I was found by the other woman. Mark had been all over my Instagram so there was no protection. The whole crumbling, horrible edifice collapsed when she called me. For years, he had lived a double existence. He’d spent his entire life with me and he was with his wife. She loved her children. Heaving her flowers. Sending flowers to her So he could copy and paste the messages between us, so that he did not make an error. From the very beginning, his ex-wife has been truthful.

He destroyed two lives, two families and four children. My daughter was left bereft and my son lost. I was left unable to function and struggling to breathe. He didn’t understand the way that the world worked. Without a second thought, he disappeared.

As I type this, these two women and their kids are in complete chaos. The two women are trying to piece together their fake lives. He booked a holiday with one of his friends in January. The promises he made to them that he would spend Christmas alone, and the dates when he claimed he was enjoying a night with each other. Lunches with both, dinners with both, and the fact they were both attending the same London gig are all part of their reality. They were friends with each other or both. They were shocked at the lies, lies, lies, lies, lies and more lies that he had about me. They now see that I’m not what he claimed me to be. They realize that I’m not insane, I don’t lie, he doesn’t have a victim and he’s a serial perpetrator.

This is the reason I started this article: to protect women.

There will be many more women behind these beautiful women. They will have more. He is a serial predator and uses his job to prey on females. The men are humbled to be able to pay attention to a former Top of the Pops frontman. If they were to know the truth about him and his past relationships, none of them would want to sleep with him. In order to convince women to have sexual relations with him, he tells them lies.

Mark uses women, and he gains their sympathy by convincing them that I am crazy and he is a victim – this is very typical perpetrator behaviour. This disgusts me. I’m used as bait to other women and men. Mark has kept me away from family members and friends. He tells them lies about me.

These women are going to be fine. They are intelligent, strong, beautiful and will be able to move forward once they have healed their hearts and hopefully trust again. This guy is an individual, and a malignant, self-deprecating narcissist. I’m sure that most men don’t have the same problem. He works in an industry that is complicit in the abuse of women, his band members, the fans – especially the female fans – they know what Mark is like. He has abused women because of his own narrative. Is there any sisterhood? All these women and men should feel ashamed. You can see the shame in their eyes if they are friends with someone from a band. As long as they have free tickets to gigs, they don’t really care about us or our kids. It’s pathetic. They’re pathetic. They are not quite as sad as Mark. These women will continue to comfort themselves as they move on but Mark will remain Mark.

We all can be strong together, here we are.

Many people are quick to dismiss the band’s frontman as a cheater, but they tell women who love them that it is normal for him. Mark explained to me that he knew my job when he met me.

My whole life I have been a journalist. I expose injustices and write about them. I also hold those responsible for their actions. Let me respond with this: “And I knew yours.” 

Morriss made the following statement to The Guardian: “I might have been selfish and thoughtless with some of my dealings in the last few months in relation to my personal and professional life, but the allegations of abuse or gaslighting against me are completely untrue and I deny them entirely.

He added his personal life had ‘certainly gotten into a hell of a tangle, people have undoubtedly been hurt because of me” and that “in many ways, all this coming to light is a great relief’.

He stated, “I’m sincerely sorry for all that happened to anybody caught up here.”

Morriss also said the last 18 months ‘undoubtedly had an adverse effect” on his mental health and decision-making. It was not what I wanted to do, but to hurt those who were kind during my difficulties.

He said he had a ‘very strong and healthy co-parenting relationship’ with the mother of his son – whom he did not identify – and wished for the same in his relationship with Wharton and their daughter. The matter being made public might have a negative impact on the lives of both the children and their parents.