Daily Mail
March 28, 2015
A whirlwind romance quickly turned into a nightmare for a British grandmother who married a man 20 years her junior in The Gambia.
Anne-Marie, 52, from Warwickshire, met husband Omar on a night out when he was in the UK on a student visa.
At the time, she was 41 with two children from a previous relationship and he was 21.
‘He was handsome and charismatic, he said he’d treat me like a queen and I would never want for anything. He told me everything I wanted to hear,’ she told Channel 5 show Love Rats Abroad.
She said Omar persistently text and called her after they first met so, in the end, she thought ‘why not’ and started dating him.
Not long after they had been together, he suggested he move into her family home as he couldn’t afford the rent on the place where he had been living.
Then as his student visa neared its expiration date, they decided to get married just months after they had first met.
‘He had come to the country on a student visa, he hadn’t been able to finish the course, he needed to send money back home, otherwise people wouldn’t be able to eat. I admired him for staying and doing what he had been doing to keep his family going,’ Anne-Marie said.
‘I entered into the relationship besotted and in love, it was dream.’
Anne-Marie’s son Joe, who was ten when they got together, said their relationship did seem to move quickly.
He said: ‘I was young so I didn’t know about relationships but it felt quick. I went from seeing him a couple of times a week to him always there and staying.’