‘I feel stupid, taken advantage of’: Canadian ‘gaslighted’ by Sydney dad

WHEN Kelly met Sydney father Billy online, she was smitten. But her internet boyfriend turned out to be a master manipulator, she says.

IT WAS the type of online romance that’s become old-fashioned in the past two decades, beginning with a meeting in a chatroom around July 2015.

Kelly Hall was a 48-year-old insurance broker from the picturesque city of Kamloops in British Columbia, Canada. Billy Baynes was a 43-year-old project manager at a Sydney flooring company with a son from a previous relationship.

Kelly was only looking for conversation, but it was hard to resist the New Zealand-born fitness fanatic. The pair exchanged photos and began talking through more modern channels, including WhatsApp and Kik. She thought he was attractive and charming.

Soon, he was calling her while he drove between jobs, sometimes as often as 20 times at night. It was her first clue something wasn’t right.

“He was quite pushy,” she told news.com.au. “He was ... trying to start a relationship, which I didn’t want.

“I did pull away a few times, but he was very persistent. If I didn’t answer, he’d call over and over. He’d call me at work.”

Kelly Hall and Billy Bayne at The Rocks on one of several visits she made.

The Sydney father was persistent with his calls and messages.

Soon, Billy was regularly asking Kelly for money.

The 43-year-old allegedly photoshopped the selfies he sent his Canadian girlfriend.

Kelly now believes the salesman was systematically manipulating her.

She felt guilty and sorry for him.

‘I WAS PAYING HIS PHONE BILL SO HE COULD TALK TO OTHER WOMEN’

Kelly, who manages 34 people, found the relationship increasingly draining on top of her demanding job and caring for her elderly parents. But she was falling ever deeper for her charismatic new boyfriend.

When she first visited him for three weeks in November 2015, he asked to borrow $50, promising to return it back within a month. She thought nothing of it, but the requests started coming thick and fast.

Soon, she was paying her partner’s bills, covering his son’s medical fees for ADHD and bailing him out of trouble when he was about to be evicted or beaten up by loan sharks.

Billy told her he wanted to marry her, but unsettling detail about him was emerging, of heavy gambling, accusations of wrongdoing and a complex web of stories to gain people’s trust.

In just a year and a half, she says Billy had gone through five phone numbers and three different jobs and had been evicted twice.

By the time the relationship ended, Kelly realised she had been manipulated. Almost three years after they met, she says her ex still owes her $12,457.

“I feel stupid, taken advantage of because I have a very big heart,” she says. “I found out he was talking to other women.

“He was asking me to pay his phone bill so he could talk to other people.”

Kelly believes she was a victim of “gaslighting” — a form of persistent manipulation that causes a victim to question their sense of reality, gradually eroding their identity and self-worth.

Australians reported losses of $42 million in online romances gone wrong in 2016, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, although Kelly and Billy’s case is more complex.

Lonely and vulnerable people often fall for internet lovers in different countries, with over 55s particularly at risk. Some have given tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to people they have never met.

ACCC Deputy Chair Delia Rickard said social media had made it easier for people to contact and gain the trust of others. “It can be really hard to tell who’s genuine and who’s fake these days,” Ms Rickard says.

Billy was evicted twice and went through five phone numbers and three jobs in the time she knew him, Kelly claims.

When he used up the patience of friends and family, the New Zealander turned to loan sharks and pawn shops for cash.

The New Zealander was a heavy gambler, on probation with his employer and at risk from loan sharks.

He constantly promised to pay Kelly back.

She paid his bills, for hotels and helped him pay off other debts.

‘HE ISOLATED ME FROM MY FRIENDS’

Looking back, Kelly can see the warning signs were there from the start. “I don’t think I realised at the time but he isolated me from my friends,” she says. “I wasn’t eating properly, or sleeping. He’d call me at 1am.”

She now knows there was another woman paying his phone bill back then.

Billy told her of “grandiose plans to go surfing in the States and come to Canada.” She knows now he had problems with the police in the past and was on probation from an employer. He didn’t even have a valid passport, and would not have been able to re-enter Australia if he had left.

When Kelly first visited the man she’d fallen for, the reality was something of a shock. The endless pouting and posing selfies he sent her had been edited. “They were always photoshopped,” she said. “He’s quite proud of it ... He actually weighed about 300 pounds (136 kilograms).”

Billy had told her he went to the gym every day, followed a strict healthy diet and occasionally went to the casino, with friends. In fact, the salesman lived on a diet of instant noodles and couldn’t afford a gym membership.

He probably wasn’t with friends in the casino on the day she had spoken to him there, but alone. He didn’t live in the Northern Beaches with the view pictured in a photo he’d sent, and his son certainly wasn’t attending the exclusive private school he had described. But Kelly didn’t want to give up on him.

The second time she visited, in May 2016, Billy was living in a holiday park. “This is going to sound snobby, but it was definitely not my kind of place,” she says. “People with not much money, trailers, it was pretty horrible. On the first day, he said, ‘Don’t answer the door, they’re trying to evict me.’ I said, ‘How much do you owe?’ He said, ‘I think they’ll be happy with $700.’

“I was ready to leave. My bags were packed and I was going to go to a hotel, but eventually I paid.”

She bought food, groceries and a doona for the friend’s place in which he was staying.

Billy wasn’t quite what Kelly had expected from their conversations online.

Billy said he was having physical fights to pay off debts.

He often talked about being homeless, having no food or needing medicine for his son.

‘HE DESTROYED ME EMOTIONALLY, PHYSICALLY AND FINANCIALLY’

Kelly can’t fully explain how she made such a big mistake. She tried to back away many times, refusing his offer of marriage and suggestion they set up a joint bank account.

But the excuses were endless. He sent her photos of the bruises on his face from a fight, telling her he was worried for his safety. He was trying to get his life back on track, he needed to feed his son, he would be fine after he started a new job. Billy was clearly in a black hole of debt.

“I felt sorry for him,” she says.

After seeing his trailer park home, she became deeply uncertain, and when her father became ill in December 2016, she cancelled her planned visit for that month. “He was really angry,” she said. “He barely asked about my father.

“That was the last straw. One of last bills I paid was his phone bill, I realised he owed $3000.”

Kelly began asking repeatedly for the money he owed her. She hired a debt collection agency, who eventually advised her to go to court. “I do not see him sorting this debt out at all,” an agent told her in emails seen by news.com.au.

She later spoke to a woman in the UK who said Billy had put her through the same pattern of constant, exhausting late-night calls. The last Kelly heard, he was dating a woman from Scotland, who she tried to warn on Facebook.

“My life will never be the same,” she said. “He destroyed me emotionally, physically and financially. He continues to do so even after we broke up.

Kelly found out Billy had a gambling problem.

The 48-year-old says she feels stupid and taken advantage of.

“He told me I should let him dream. He has to be allowed to have dreams. I told him he’s so fake he makes Barbie look real.

“It’s not about the money. I hate that he’ll get away with this.

“I’m a professional and well-educated. This man manipulated me.”

Billy says Kelly is “bitter” about their relationship ending and didn’t like his new partner, who she “stalked” on Facebook. “The only time she started asking for money was when we split up because she found out I was in contact with someone else,” he tells news.com.au. “She got the s***s.

“The relationship went sour and she got bitter and nasty.

“I said, it’s better we don’t stay in contact. She didn’t like that.

“She gave my number to people on the site that didn’t like me. She gave people my son's number, this is my son’s number that my mother paid for.”

He says he is planning to pay off his debt once he gets back on track, although he denies it’s as much as she claims. “She gave me this figure, it’s crazy. Give me some invoices. I could owe you $8000, I could you $15,000.

“I’ve been evicted, I’m staying with my aunty ... I was unemployed for a while, which hurt.”

He says he has had Vodafone and Telstra “come after him”, and could simply go bankrupt, leaving Kelly at the bottom of the list — but he’s “trying to do the right thing”.

At his request, she has set up a Paypal account and he promised in December to start paying $50 a week from next month. “I’m trying to fix it,” he says. “I don’t want her to be short-changed ... She’s a really good person. It’s not just her, I did the wrong thing too.

“Yes, I borrowed money from her. We were in a relationship ... she never questioned it. I used to have problems with gambling, she knew that.

“I’ll start paying on February 1.”

Kelly isn’t holding her breath.

[e-mail] | @emmareyn