Moment instructor left paralysed after her neck was snapped by jealous ex nods ‘sure’ from hospital mattress when she is requested if he harm her on objective

A teacher left paralysed by her jealous ex nodded ‘yes’ when asked if he hurt her on purpose in a heartbreaking video taken from her hospital bed. 

Trudi Burgess, 57, had her neck broken when she threatened to leave her boyfriend Robert Easom, 56, who was jailed today after he flew into an ‘uncontrollable’ rage and launched a ‘vicious’ and ‘forceful’ attack on her. 

Footage released by police officers shows Ms Burgess being questioned about her injuries while covered in wires and a mouth tube. 

A female police officer is heard asking Ms Burgess whether Easom’s story – that they were ‘play-fighting’ when she got injured – is true.

The officer asks: ‘The circumstances of your injuries – what was passed over to the hospital when you came in – your partner said you were play-fighting. Is that true?’ 

Ms Burgess struggles to move on the bed, but appears to shake her head. She is then asked if Easom ‘purposely hurt’ her, to which she nods her head.   

Easom was jailed today for 16 years. Ms Burgess has now bravely opened up about the ‘difficult journey’ she has been through after being paralysed for life – and has pledged to help other women experiencing domestic abuse. 

She was left paralysed from her chest down after Easom, 56, pinned her on a bed before placing his entire body weight on her neck until it snapped – with Ms Burgess believing she was ‘going to die’.

Ms Burgess needed a 11-hour operation, spent more than three months in an intensive care unit and now requires 24-hour care. 

After his sentencing, which also has a further four-year extended term, Ms Burgess bravely detailed her ‘incredibly difficult journey’ and thanked those who had been supporting her since she was attacked.

In an unprepared speech, she paid tribute to ‘people who have meant I can get through each day, people who have kept me going, every single professional and every single member of my family and my close friends who have been with me every step of the way.’

Her gratitude was extended to the justice system as well as ICU staff at Royal Preston Hospital, ‘who taught me how to breathe again when I didn’t think I would ever breathe again’. She also thanked staff at Southport Hospital, where she underwent rehabilitation. 

Asked how she felt following the sentencing, she continued: ‘I feel incredibly sad, content that justice has been done, but it’s not a happy day, because I’m like this everyday for the rest of my life and this is an incredibly difficult condition to deal with.

‘When I glanced over at him, I just felt complete pity and sorrow that he can’t actually understand who he is and the rehabilitation he needs.’

Showing the extent of her compassion, she admitted still feeling ‘great love’ for the man who left her with life-changing injuries, adding that with the right help he might come to understand his actions. 

She said: ‘I feel really sad because there was great love, I think there still is. I think he’s a very confused person and with help he could feel remorse. He needs to understand what he was doing. Somebody needs to help him.’

A statement was also read out to the media on Ms Burgess’ behalf, in which she pledged to ‘look ahead with purpose, with strength and the desire to make people aware of the signs of coercive and controlling behaviour and abuse’.

She added: ‘The love I have in my life is far greater than any injury I have sustained or any pain I will endure. My grand-daughters and my children are everything to me. They are my focus. 

‘I refuse to let the abuse I experienced be the final word on who I am. From this point on I want to help others.

‘If my voice can help even one woman leave before violence escalates then something positive will have come from all of this.’

Easom denied deliberately breaking her neck and intending to cause her serious harm, but in November a jury at Preston Crown Court took less than 27 minutes to find him guilty following a trial.

During the trial, the court heard how mother-of-two Ms Burgess was grieving the death of her husband from a brain tumour and was ’emotionally vulnerable’ when she met Easom, who was her sister’s gardener. 

Their relationship was initially everything she wanted ‘heady, passionate and loving’, but it then became ‘abusive and violent’ and she became ‘alienated’ from her family.

By February 2025 she plucked up the courage to tell him the relationship was over after staying the night at Easom’s home in Chipping, in the Ribble Valley, near Chorley, Lancashire.

Easom, who claimed he had a ‘monster inside him’, launched his ‘unprovoked and deliberate attack’ after flying into a ‘blind’ rage.

He swore at Ms Burgess and despite her pleas for him not to hurt her he grabbed and moved her so she was on her knees at the end of the bed.

Using both hands or his chest, he then pushed down with his ‘entire bodyweight’ on the back of her head, forcing her chin into her chest.

Ms Burgess screamed but Easom carried on and she then ‘heard a crack and all feeling left her body’.

Giving evidence, Ms Burgess said: ‘I think I screamed, but then once he folded my head in, I had no voice, I couldn’t scream,’ she told the jury.

‘I couldn’t get out, and he’s so strong, there was absolutely no getting out of it.

‘And then he just kept folding my head, in and in and in.

‘I kept thinking, ‘He’s gonna stop now,’ and, ‘I’m gonna die.’

Ms Burgess added that she remembered flopping back and telling Easom: ‘Oh my God, I can’t feel anything in my body, you’ve ruined both our lives.’

Easom initially told Ms Burgess she was ‘fine’ but when he realised she couldn’t move he put his head in his hands and told her: ‘Oh my God Trudi, what have I done?

But in a 999 call played to the jury, when Easom was asked what had happened, he replied: ‘She’s just had an accident and she can’t move.’

He added: ‘She’s fallen out of bed and just landed in a bad way really.’

When paramedics arrived at their home, he told them the couple had been ‘mollycoddling’ and ‘messing round’. 

But Ms Burgess later told police there had not been a fall or a play fight and Easom had injured her deliberately.

Harrowing video footage provided by Lancashire Constabulary shows the moment officers asked a bed-bound Ms Burgess, unable to speak and covered with tubes placed inside her throat and nose, if her partner was correct when he claimed her injuries were caused by ‘play fighting’.

She defiantly shook her head in response to the question. 

When asked if Easom had ‘purposefully’ hurt her, the teacher was able to nod in response.

Hospital CT scans confirmed her neck had been broken and she would never walk again, and she now requires 24-hour care.

Easom had attacked Ms Burgess previously.

On one occasion, he wrapped Ms Burgess’ head in a bed sheet until she was unable to breath and on another headbutted her when she complained they did not have enough crockery or cutlery to host friends for dinner.

He pleaded guilty to those two assaults and had previously admitted engaging in coercive and controlling behaviour between July 2017 and February 2025.

Easom also admitted breaking Ms Burgess neck and causing her tetraplegia, but denied intending to cause her very serious harm.

After his arrest, Easom told police in a prepared statement that he would never do anything intentionally to hurt Ms Burgess.

‘I love Trudi more than life itself,’ he said.

In a victim impact statement read in court Ms Burgess described Easom as ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ character and said the attack had caused long-standing physical and mental health problems.

‘My sense of safety for me and my family has been taken from me and the thought of him walking freely is a terrifying prospect.

‘I grieve every day for the life I’ve lost – a life that was stolen from me by someone who I trusted. I feel trapped and powerless. Sometimes I feel like I’m just surviving….not living.’

‘Everything that once gave me joy now feels out of reach. My future has been rewritten and not by choice.

She said Easom’s crime had ‘taken away everything’ she had built, planned for and enjoyed.

‘It has robbed me of my health, my independence, my ability to care for my family, my career, my freedom and my peace of mind. Each day is a physical, emotional and mental battle.

‘This injury is permanent. I will never get back the life I had. I now live with constant pain, with limitations and heartbreak. My children and granddaughter have lost the mother and grandmother they once had.’

She said that she has suffered from depression, anxiety and symptoms of PTSD, had lost the ability to sing and she now relies on financial support and disability benefits.

Ms Burgess said Eason has ‘a true Jekyll and Hyde personality’ where he could be ‘loving and attentive’ and then switch in a moment into a ‘truly terrifying monster’, adding: ‘I am living proof of the devastating effects of his uncontrolled bursts of anger.’

Prior to the sentencing, the court heard further details about Easom’s abusive ways and how he resented Ms Burgess living in her own home in Chorley, but refused to allow her to make changes to his home.

He would regularly verbally abuse her and the abuse became physical.

Easom disliked Ms Burgess being a teacher and had a ‘chip on his shoulder’ about the ‘class disparity’ between them, telling her he came from ‘proper farming stock’.

He admitted he ‘enjoyed’ frightening and humiliating her and the incidents became so frequent Ms Burgess started documenting them in notes on her phone.

On one occasion her grabbed her violently and dragged her around the bathroom, telling her, in a quote from Sylvester Stallone film Rambo: First Blood: ‘Don’t push me or I’ll give you a war you won’t believe.’

He would also call her ‘a psycho’ and ‘gaslighted’ her.

After other violent incidents, he told her he had a ‘monster inside him’ and she shouldn’t ‘unleash’ it.

Easom’s behaviour left her daughter frightened and concerned and she refused to stay with him.

Ms Burgess’ daughter Georgina said her mother being paralysed had changed their family’s lives ‘forever’.

Georgina said that she had found out she was pregnant a few weeks later, but what should have happy memories became the ‘darkest part of her life’.

Happiness was replaced with ‘fear and trauma’ and she had suffered anxiety and depression, she said.

Ms Brugess’ son Jackson said the attack had had ‘consequences far beyond the initial injuries she suffered’ and had ‘dismantled’ the lives around her.

He would need counselling, he said, and lived in a ‘state of permanent vigilance’.

In his final remarks today and having read the impact statements out to the court, His Honour Judge Altham said: ‘No sentence I can pass could begin to equal to the harm you have caused. 

‘I must pass the sentence which I consider to be just and lawful. 

‘But the fact remains that, even with the lengthy sentence I will impose, you will have a prospect of a future which have denied to your victim.’ 

A link to Trudi’s GoFundMe can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-care-for-our-mum-trudi