Ioan Gruffudd & Alice Evans #229 The day that Ioan realised she was totally and utterly bonkers

[Lulugrace]

Congratulations to @BessieNessie for the thread title, as nominated by @scantysandwich!

I had to edit it for length. The full title is "That was the day that Ioan realised without a shadow of a doubt that she was totally and utterly bonkers". It's in reference to this bag which Alice created for her now-defunct Etsy shop, which we discussed at the end of the last thread.

Recap

• Hell froze over, and the Daily Mail actually ran a story which was unfavourable to Alice, which stated that Ioan had overpaid her spousal support by £278,000
• However in true Daily Mail fashion, they then ran another story which made Ioan out to have a current net worth of $2.8 million, and contrasted that with Alice being almost penniless, thereby making Ioan look heartless
• Alice posted a new set of mirror selfies on her Instagram
• Please vote in the poll above so we can get an idea of what process we should follow for thread title nominations

Please add anything to the recap which I may have missed out!

Please stick to the main players, and obscure any identifying info from screenshots from those who are not Alice (or her latest sock), and those who do not have more than 10k social media followers.

Previous thread: https://tattle.life/threads/ioan-gr...tv-or-movies-but-its-hard-finding-jobs.43825/

Congratulations on the title thread! I wonder what this week will bring
---

I've used my computer hacking skills AGAIN and have managed to steal YET ANOTHER excerpt from Alice's forthcoming self-published book, "He Left Me For A Bogan".

It also looks like the front cover is properly designed now, instead of having someone throw it together in three minutes in PowerPoint (ahem).

View attachment 2721073


Foreword by Alison Boshoff


View attachment 2721080


I have known Alice Evans for four years now, with our friendship beginning shortly after her marriage to the actor Ioan Gruffudd spectacularly imploded.

Their story began as a picture-perfect couple, young actors showing equal promise and a matching, almost impossible, beauty. The deal was sealed with a New Year’s Eve proposal delivered via a Cartier engagement ring set into an ice cube in a Mojito cocktail.

‘Angel, will you do the marrying thing?’ were the fond words chosen that night in Cuba. It ended with a howl of pain, and accusations of lies, ‘gaslighting’ and ‘mental torture’ made via Twitter in the small hours.

Indeed, the drama surrounding the sudden collapse of Ioan Gruffudd’s 13-year-marriage to actress Alice Evans would scarcely be out of place in one of the twisted domestic dramas he has starred in.

And we at the Daily Mail have been here for it all! We’ve published story after story about this salacious saga, without bothering to verify the facts, or any of Alice’s claims. Our failure to fact-check anything even resulted in our having to make a donation to an MS charity on behalf of Bianca Wallace, after we published a story which defamed her. We couldn’t even be bothered to print Bianca’s correct age in many of our articles. We've also been happy to print intrusive photos of Alice’s minor children too, as she gave us the permission to do so.

And even though we printed (and still continue to print) many of Alice’s claims and other mistruths – such as that Alice had no money to pay her rent because Ioan left Alice penniless; that Ioan didn’t want to see his children; that Ioan was having an affair with Ella Newton; and that Bianca was Alice’s friend, which made it worse that she was having an “affair” with Ioan behind Alice’s back – we won't bother investigating any of Alice's further false claims. Who needs facts and the truth, when you can just write any old bollocks and hit “publish”?

It was a challenge to get this book published, as you might imagine. So to get around those challenges, Alice didn’t run it by any lawyers, and no fact-checking was carried out. This is known as the Daily Mail Process. Hopefully the book won’t have to get withdrawn from sale and pulped! During my support of Alice and bringing her stories – her truth – to the press, I have also faced criticism from a US lawyer who shall remain nameless (her name rhymes with “Vandrea Turkhart”). These are the sorts of bullies I am up against, when I did nothing wrong apart from lie about how I obtained some court documents, and then lied again by claiming I had emailed them to the aforementioned lawyer.

During these past four years, I have seen Alice make great strides with her life. She now only drinks several bottles of rosé a week instead of several a day. She now buys ten things off eBay a week instead of 30. She now takes the dog for a walk a couple of times a week instead of rarely ever. She has managed to not publicly call Bianca a “bogan” from her official social media accounts for over two years now (although that record is considerably shorter if you take Alice’s Twitter sock accounts into consideration, but look, nobody’s perfect).

I am proud to call Alice my friend. I can honestly say she is the most tenacious, forthright, fearless, energetic, loud, forgetful and yes… loving person I’ve ever met. She doesn’t care if she’s bound by a domestic violence restraining order. She doesn’t cow to emails from her husband’s lawyers, or even her own lawyers. Nobody can tell her what to do. She never admits her mistakes. What admirable qualities for someone in their mid-50s going through a huge life-change. Alice really is the patron saint of wronged wives. A shining example of how to act after your husband decides he doesn’t want to remain married to you for the rest of his life.

So yes Alice, here’s to four more years of our friendship! As long as you continue to provide drama so that the Daily Mail can print stories about it and make money off that ad revenue, I’ll always be here for you, and will always have your back.

Alice, I salute your courage, your strength and your indefatigability.

Please note that this book is published in Alice’s favourite font, Gill Sans. It is her favourite font because it reflects the fact that Alice’s ex-mother-in-law is no longer in her life.


Alison Boshoff, Daily Mail Chief Showbusiness Writer

London, January 2024

And you're a genius

 

[Gilbert]

It was yes. We've been subjected to such lovely things through the years so we have.
---

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/alicewhoever/

I’d love to see Alice try some of these hair styles. A deep conditioning treatment, a good cut and some loose waves. I think she might have been aiming for this when she did the granny curls for the nose picking selfie. It would be great to see her with a great cut and colour and some movement in her hair. I think it would soften her face tenfold and make her look much younger.

 

[Bridgeofsighs]

This is probably Alice socking on the DM. Everyone's Bianca lol

and this is what's called using the children as both a sword and a shield, just like Andrea Burkhart said. Of course, it's projection. AFE bullies her kids, not us. A narc's accusations are confessions.

 

[ThisishowIlivenow]

I’d love to see Alice try some of these hair styles. A deep conditioning treatment, a good cut and some loose waves. I think she might have been aiming for this when she did the granny curls for the nose picking selfie. It would be great to see her with a great cut and colour and some movement in her hair. I think it would soften her face tenfold and make her look much younger.

Let's aim a bit lower for her, knowing her as we do.
She should try cleaning it once in a while. I hear shampoo is good.


However I do agree that her hair could benefit from everything you said. If she just did something to it, it would be good.

 

[Lulugrace]

I'd like to make a fairly random comment. This is by no means an attempt to "tone-police" or comment on any specific people other than Alice. I'm just thinking out loud.

I think we can all agree that the Daily Mail won't publish Alice stories if she's not popular. Alice provides a steady stream of antics so she can get published on the sidebar of shame and mainline her narc supply. If there's one thing Alice loves as much as herself, it's attention. Whether good or bad. She lives to be talked about.

We also know that Alice loves to fight online. She's been doing it for decades by this point, whether it's under her verified accounts or via sock accounts. She will wear her fingers to the bone posting derogatory Daily Mail comments denigrating Bianca and Ioan. She will do this for years if she can. Ioan and Bianca will be constantly harassed by the DM because of her.

Given these two things, I'd like to propose that we cut off the narc supply. Don't click on the DM articles. Don't comment. (I love the comments that have been posted here but commenting to her just fuels her narcissism and abuse). We can have one volunteer check for stories and copy them here so the Daily Mail doesn't get clicks. If they don't get clicks Alice doesn't get stories. And if Alice doesn't get stories, that's one less way she can abuse Ioan and Bianca online. Thoughts?

Very good idea my love!
@welp usually gets anything before most of us....you gotta get up early in the morning to catch Welp out!

 

[M33L4]

This is probably Alice socking on the DM. Everyone's Bianca lol

View attachment 2721785
and this is what's called using the children as both a sword and a shield, just like Andrea Burkhart said. Of course, it's projection. AFE bullies her kids, not us. A narc's accusations are confessions.

View attachment 2721788

How ironic that they have indeed got NarcRage

 

[NarcRage]

This is probably Alice socking on the DM. Everyone's Bianca lol

View attachment 2721785
and this is what's called using the children as both a sword and a shield, just like Andrea Burkhart said. Of course, it's projection. AFE bullies her kids, not us. A narc's accusations are confessions.

View attachment 2721788

Yes and I've never done this. They are victims and should be protected. I don't think they should be photographed or plastered all over the media by their mother.

 

[sallygsoton]

Aww thanks @scantysandwich what a nice surprise. Looks like we hit the end of the thread while we were busy rolling on the floor admiring her kindergarten handicrafts.

He must have hated how she dragged his name into everything from her drunken Trump rants to her Glue-Gun-Garbage. No wonder he woke up anxious. How cringe was all that.

If she really believed he liked it then he’s a way better actor than any of us gave him credit for.

View attachment 2721711

AFE says "you can be certain there is only one of these in the world!"...

Thank duck for that says...the rest of the world!

 

[lulooo]

I've used my computer hacking skills AGAIN and have managed to steal YET ANOTHER excerpt from Alice's forthcoming self-published book, "He Left Me For A Bogan".

It also looks like the front cover is properly designed now, instead of having someone throw it together in three minutes in PowerPoint (ahem).

View attachment 2721073


Foreword by Alison Boshoff


View attachment 2721080


I have known Alice Evans for four years now, with our friendship beginning shortly after her marriage to the actor Ioan Gruffudd spectacularly imploded.

Their story began as a picture-perfect couple, young actors showing equal promise and a matching, almost impossible, beauty. The deal was sealed with a New Year’s Eve proposal delivered via a Cartier engagement ring set into an ice cube in a Mojito cocktail.

‘Angel, will you do the marrying thing?’ were the fond words chosen that night in Cuba. It ended with a howl of pain, and accusations of lies, ‘gaslighting’ and ‘mental torture’ made via Twitter in the small hours.

Indeed, the drama surrounding the sudden collapse of Ioan Gruffudd’s 13-year-marriage to actress Alice Evans would scarcely be out of place in one of the twisted domestic dramas he has starred in.

And we at the Daily Mail have been here for it all! We’ve published story after story about this salacious saga, without bothering to verify the facts, or any of Alice’s claims. Our failure to fact-check anything even resulted in our having to make a donation to an MS charity on behalf of Bianca Wallace, after we published a story which defamed her. We couldn’t even be bothered to print Bianca’s correct age in many of our articles. We've also been happy to print intrusive photos of Alice’s minor children too, as she gave us the permission to do so.

And even though we printed (and still continue to print) many of Alice’s claims and other mistruths – such as that Alice had no money to pay her rent because Ioan left Alice penniless; that Ioan didn’t want to see his children; that Ioan was having an affair with Ella Newton; and that Bianca was Alice’s friend, which made it worse that she was having an “affair” with Ioan behind Alice’s back – we won't bother investigating any of Alice's further false claims. Who needs facts and the truth, when you can just write any old bollocks and hit “publish”?

It was a challenge to get this book published, as you might imagine. So to get around those challenges, Alice didn’t run it by any lawyers, and no fact-checking was carried out. This is known as the Daily Mail Process. Hopefully the book won’t have to get withdrawn from sale and pulped! During my support of Alice and bringing her stories – her truth – to the press, I have also faced criticism from a US lawyer who shall remain nameless (her name rhymes with “Vandrea Turkhart”). These are the sorts of bullies I am up against, when I did nothing wrong apart from lie about how I obtained some court documents, and then lied again by claiming I had emailed them to the aforementioned lawyer.

During these past four years, I have seen Alice make great strides with her life. She now only drinks several bottles of rosé a week instead of several a day. She now buys ten things off eBay a week instead of 30. She now takes the dog for a walk a couple of times a week instead of rarely ever. She has managed to not publicly call Bianca a “bogan” from her official social media accounts for over two years now (although that record is considerably shorter if you take Alice’s Twitter sock accounts into consideration, but look, nobody’s perfect).

I am proud to call Alice my friend. I can honestly say she is the most tenacious, forthright, fearless, energetic, loud, forgetful and yes… loving person I’ve ever met. She doesn’t care if she’s bound by a domestic violence restraining order. She doesn’t cow to emails from her husband’s lawyers, or even her own lawyers. Nobody can tell her what to do. She never admits her mistakes. What admirable qualities for someone in their mid-50s going through a huge life-change. Alice really is the patron saint of wronged wives. A shining example of how to act after your husband decides he doesn’t want to remain married to you for the rest of his life.

So yes Alice, here’s to four more years of our friendship! As long as you continue to provide drama so that the Daily Mail can print stories about it and make money off that ad revenue, I’ll always be here for you, and will always have your back.

Alice, I salute your courage, your strength and your indefatigability.

Please note that this book is published in Alice’s favourite font, Gill Sans. It is her favourite font because it reflects the fact that Alice’s ex-mother-in-law is no longer in her life.


Alison Boshoff, Daily Mail Chief Showbusiness Writer

London, January 2024

This is brilliant @Ametrine, absolutely brilliant. I chuckled so hard I sounded like a demented walrus, and woke the eldest dog up

 

[Autisteuse]

I’ve been thinking about what’s going on with Ella, and the disapprobation she still receives on these threads sometimes.
I teach psychology to pre-U students - one of my many hats. I won’t go into axons and dendrons; but I think it’s important to bear in mind what happens to the brain as a child reaches adolescence. In short, it’s Armageddon. Grey matter decreases; white matter increases. The brain refolds itself, trimming away extraneous matter. Neurons and neuronal activity increases. Emotions run riot. A teenager’s social state reflects directly on her mental state, and vice versa. Lifelong tendencies to depression and addiction are established during the teen years. Ella has been going through years of hell. We only see the carnage of Casa Evans from a distance. Ella is in the middle of it.
Alice referred to the girls as her ‘life’s work’. IG, for the sake of his own sanity - and I don’t think it would be pushing the envelope through the sorting-office wall to say ‘existence’ - left Ella at the worst possible time in her development, because Alice left him no choice in so doing. She was on the cusp of young adulthood, where, as mentioned above, the brain goes through sizeable and unalterable changes. Physical development, menstruation - with its huge challenges, not the least of which means a young woman realises her capacity for fertility and has to guard against it, plus all the predatory behaviour from the males of the species it brings - and, as a Harvard study suggests, cycling through every single human emotion once every twenty four hours… plus the nightmare of a manipulative and damaging mother-figure who punishes where she should praise, and praises where she should punish.
Ella should have been allowed to follow the normal maturation process, i.e. begin to separate herself from the mother figure and explore her own identity. (Usually, this involves a lot of slammed doors, ‘I hate you’, and competition.) Instead, she was forced to believe she could ‘change’ and counsel her own father. She had to witness her mother’s incessant drunkenness, alarming behaviour, and experience foulmouthed abuse. Ella endured endless tales of her father’s apparent betrayal, to the extent she became brainwashed against him. Then, at a time when she should have been indulging in customary adolescent risk-taking and social interaction, she was pulled from school and wider society for an entire year and isolated with an abusive, substance-addicted woman. God knows how many hours Alice worked on Ella. And God only knows what Alice claimed, given her unfamiliarity with the truth. I wouldn’t be surprised if Evans claimed IG perpetrated the most vile and horrific crimes in an effort to get Ella onside.
What seems to be forgotten is just how young Ella is. Her shocking behaviour during the sleepover is not that of an adult, but a much younger child. Older adolescents may have indulged in a bit of arson and/or criminal damage. Ella threw around groceries and ran away. The account of her behaviour by the psychiatrist is more reminiscent of a nine-year-old - and the judge saw it.
Because she has been simultaneously infantilised and parentified, she has been forced into the position whereby she feels responsible for Alice, yet has absolutely no compulsion to mature. Her various crimes - hacking into his IG and posting infantile messages, stealing $400 for Christmas presents - are the actions of a much younger person. Her height is irrelevant. She’s a damaged, disturbed kid who has been kept in a near-hostage situation. She has had no chance to develop at her own speed, and her enforced isolation ensures she’s infantilised.
She’s not beyond hope, though. The therapist with whom she is working will be making sizeable changes. By appealing to her immaturity, they will hopefully be able to instill in her the foundations for responsible, mature adulthood. But it is incredibly difficult to undo that much manipulation, estrangement and faux-adoration. Pushing her down the model route, so that Alice can be a Kardashian-style momager, is a catastrophic mistake. While Ella is undoubtedly a beautiful girl, she has neither the maturity nor resilience to cope with the dark, cutthroat, shallow and insincere world of modelling.
I think IG knows all this, which is why he hasn’t given up hope. It may take years for Ella to grow up and wake up to what has been done to her, but he will always be ready to welcome her home. She is a desperately wounded soul who needs understanding and compassion, no matter how vilely she has behaved. It is best not to judge her by adult standards, but see her as the wounded, manipulated child that she is.

(Apologies for the essay. Returning to lurking - depression. Love to all.)

 

[welp]

Ioan and Bianca bowling with an accountant and an investment person (If I have searched for the right people) is exactly my kind of humor given the recent filings lol

I actually wonder once they marry if Bianca thinks of doing something related to her old job again (her visa status will have blocked her so far from that). She clearly isnt going to have a acting career beyond occasional fun mini gigs. Of course if she received a insurance pay out as we suspect this wont be possible, but there are other jobs she can do even with MS. And I can understand not working if you dont have to thanks to your wealth.

 

[Bridgeofsighs]

It is best not to judge her by adult standards

I agree with what you said and I've said before that 14 is a difficult age anyway. However I have never judged her by adult standards, just that of a 14 yo.

The therapist with whom she is working will be making sizeable changes.

I would like to think that but I doubt it giving she is living with a narc mom who is VERY anti-therapy. Everything the therapist says will be disparaged when Ella gets grilled about it. I said years ago that the kids needed to be removed from AFE and they weren't so now the problems will be much harder to deal with as they have to return to Casa Crazy after every session and AFE has had years to work on them.

She’s not beyond hope, though.

Yes!

 

[lulooo]

I know she's expensive but I think it's best to commission Alice to do the bedazzling. No matter how many button and bow classes one takes I dont think any of us could achieve a similar aesthetic and nuance when it comes to her handbags and gladrags.

Does the Abuser throw in a free horse blanket with all her orders? Asking for a friend with absolutely no taste

 

[ZipSilver]

I’ve been thinking about what’s going on with Ella, and the disapprobation she still receives on these threads sometimes.
I teach psychology to pre-U students - one of my many hats. I won’t go into axons and dendrons; but I think it’s important to bear in mind what happens to the brain as a child reaches adolescence. In short, it’s Armageddon. Grey matter decreases; white matter increases. The brain refolds itself, trimming away extraneous matter. Neurons and neuronal activity increases. Emotions run riot. A teenager’s social state reflects directly on her mental state, and vice versa. Lifelong tendencies to depression and addiction are established during the teen years. Ella has been going through years of hell. We only see the carnage of Casa Evans from a distance. Ella is in the middle of it.
Alice referred to the girls as her ‘life’s work’. IG, for the sake of his own sanity - and I don’t think it would be pushing the envelope through the sorting-office wall to say ‘existence’ - left Ella at the worst possible time in her development, because Alice left him no choice in so doing. She was on the cusp of young adulthood, where, as mentioned above, the brain goes through sizeable and unalterable changes. Physical development, menstruation - with its huge challenges, not the least of which means a young woman realises her capacity for fertility and has to guard against it, plus all the predatory behaviour from the males of the species it brings - and, as a Harvard study suggests, cycling through every single human emotion once every twenty four hours… plus the nightmare of a manipulative and damaging mother-figure who punishes where she should praise, and praises where she should punish.
Ella should have been allowed to follow the normal maturation process, i.e. begin to separate herself from the mother figure and explore her own identity. (Usually, this involves a lot of slammed doors, ‘I hate you’, and competition.) Instead, she was forced to believe she could ‘change’ and counsel her own father. She had to witness her mother’s incessant drunkenness, alarming behaviour, and experience foulmouthed abuse. Ella endured endless tales of her father’s apparent betrayal, to the extent she became brainwashed against him. Then, at a time when she should have been indulging in customary adolescent risk-taking and social interaction, she was pulled from school and wider society for an entire year and isolated with an abusive, substance-addicted woman. God knows how many hours Alice worked on Ella. And God only knows what Alice claimed, given her unfamiliarity with the truth. I wouldn’t be surprised if Evans claimed IG perpetrated the most vile and horrific crimes in an effort to get Ella onside.
What seems to be forgotten is just how young Ella is. Her shocking behaviour during the sleepover is not that of an adult, but a much younger child. Older adolescents may have indulged in a bit of arson and/or criminal damage. Ella threw around groceries and ran away. The account of her behaviour by the psychiatrist is more reminiscent of a nine-year-old - and the judge saw it.
Because she has been simultaneously infantilised and parentified, she has been forced into the position whereby she feels responsible for Alice, yet has absolutely no compulsion to mature. Her various crimes - hacking into his IG and posting infantile messages, stealing $400 for Christmas presents - are the actions of a much younger person. Her height is irrelevant. She’s a damaged, disturbed kid who has been kept in a near-hostage situation. She has had no chance to develop at her own speed, and her enforced isolation ensures she’s infantilised.
She’s not beyond hope, though. The therapist with whom she is working will be making sizeable changes. By appealing to her immaturity, they will hopefully be able to instill in her the foundations for responsible, mature adulthood. But it is incredibly difficult to undo that much manipulation, estrangement and faux-adoration. Pushing her down the model route, so that Alice can be a Kardashian-style momager, is a catastrophic mistake. While Ella is undoubtedly a beautiful girl, she has neither the maturity nor resilience to cope with the dark, cutthroat, shallow and insincere world of modelling.
I think IG knows all this, which is why he hasn’t given up hope. It may take years for Ella to grow up and wake up to what has been done to her, but he will always be ready to welcome her home. She is a desperately wounded soul who needs understanding and compassion, no matter how vilely she has behaved. It is best not to judge her by adult standards, but see her as the wounded, manipulated child that she is.

(Apologies for the essay. Returning to lurking - depression. Love to all.)

I can never forget Alice telling the girls she didn’t want to see them and they could duck off to Gloria’s. The ‘the babies can support me or duck off’. If Ella appears to support Alice’s vile behaviour it’s because she has no choice. For her own survival. She has been separated from her father, is well aware she isn’t safe or secure with her mother, and likely feels she has to do everything her mum says to avoid being abandoned or threatened or worse.

Think we’d all do well to put ourselves in the shoes of a ten year old who loses their dad (who believes their dad has outright upped and abandoned them), whose mother is a frightening presence, who then spends the next three years in hell, unable to escape to school for much of that time, trying to protect her little sister, whose mother is ineffectual, who is told for years she is going to lose her home and who knows where we’ll end up? Just the pain alone of having such a close bond with her dad and then being told he no longer loves her. She’s doing the best the can and frankly I’m surprised she hasn’t done worse than she has. People forget when you’re under this kind of pressure and stress you will do whatever it takes to survive.

 

[WinterSolstice]

I’d love to see Alice try some of these hair styles.

I’d love to see Alice try a job.

 

[Bridgeofsighs]

Think we’d all do well to put ourselves in the shoes of a ten year old

Ella's 14 now. I have put myself in her shoes and I still don't think I would have done what she did. Other people might though and that's why there's a personal element involved in this, not just environmental as I already said. One size does absolutely not fit all because we are all different.
---

I’d love to see Alice try a job.

She has a job lol. THE BAYBEEZ!!!

Speaking of job, I better do some work myself.

 

[IKickLikeKatya]

Ioan and Bianca bowling with an accountant and an investment person (If I have searched for the right people) is exactly my kind of humor given the recent filings lol

I actually wonder once they marry if Bianca thinks of doing something related to her old job again (her visa status will have blocked her so far from that). She clearly isnt going to have a acting career beyond occasional fun mini gigs. Of course if she received a insurance pay out as we suspect this wont be possible, but there are other jobs she can do even with MS. And I can understand not working if you dont have to thanks to your wealth.

Look at that, people leaving the house to do something fun. Al should take notes on what having a life looks like. It certainly isn't endless mirror selfies

 

[Gilbert]

I’ve been thinking about what’s going on with Ella, and the disapprobation she still receives on these threads sometimes.
I teach psychology to pre-U students - one of my many hats. I won’t go into axons and dendrons; but I think it’s important to bear in mind what happens to the brain as a child reaches adolescence. In short, it’s Armageddon. Grey matter decreases; white matter increases. The brain refolds itself, trimming away extraneous matter. Neurons and neuronal activity increases. Emotions run riot. A teenager’s social state reflects directly on her mental state, and vice versa. Lifelong tendencies to depression and addiction are established during the teen years. Ella has been going through years of hell. We only see the carnage of Casa Evans from a distance. Ella is in the middle of it.
Alice referred to the girls as her ‘life’s work’. IG, for the sake of his own sanity - and I don’t think it would be pushing the envelope through the sorting-office wall to say ‘existence’ - left Ella at the worst possible time in her development, because Alice left him no choice in so doing. She was on the cusp of young adulthood, where, as mentioned above, the brain goes through sizeable and unalterable changes. Physical development, menstruation - with its huge challenges, not the least of which means a young woman realises her capacity for fertility and has to guard against it, plus all the predatory behaviour from the males of the species it brings - and, as a Harvard study suggests, cycling through every single human emotion once every twenty four hours… plus the nightmare of a manipulative and damaging mother-figure who punishes where she should praise, and praises where she should punish.
Ella should have been allowed to follow the normal maturation process, i.e. begin to separate herself from the mother figure and explore her own identity. (Usually, this involves a lot of slammed doors, ‘I hate you’, and competition.) Instead, she was forced to believe she could ‘change’ and counsel her own father. She had to witness her mother’s incessant drunkenness, alarming behaviour, and experience foulmouthed abuse. Ella endured endless tales of her father’s apparent betrayal, to the extent she became brainwashed against him. Then, at a time when she should have been indulging in customary adolescent risk-taking and social interaction, she was pulled from school and wider society for an entire year and isolated with an abusive, substance-addicted woman. God knows how many hours Alice worked on Ella. And God only knows what Alice claimed, given her unfamiliarity with the truth. I wouldn’t be surprised if Evans claimed IG perpetrated the most vile and horrific crimes in an effort to get Ella onside.
What seems to be forgotten is just how young Ella is. Her shocking behaviour during the sleepover is not that of an adult, but a much younger child. Older adolescents may have indulged in a bit of arson and/or criminal damage. Ella threw around groceries and ran away. The account of her behaviour by the psychiatrist is more reminiscent of a nine-year-old - and the judge saw it.
Because she has been simultaneously infantilised and parentified, she has been forced into the position whereby she feels responsible for Alice, yet has absolutely no compulsion to mature. Her various crimes - hacking into his IG and posting infantile messages, stealing $400 for Christmas presents - are the actions of a much younger person. Her height is irrelevant. She’s a damaged, disturbed kid who has been kept in a near-hostage situation. She has had no chance to develop at her own speed, and her enforced isolation ensures she’s infantilised.
She’s not beyond hope, though. The therapist with whom she is working will be making sizeable changes. By appealing to her immaturity, they will hopefully be able to instill in her the foundations for responsible, mature adulthood. But it is incredibly difficult to undo that much manipulation, estrangement and faux-adoration. Pushing her down the model route, so that Alice can be a Kardashian-style momager, is a catastrophic mistake. While Ella is undoubtedly a beautiful girl, she has neither the maturity nor resilience to cope with the dark, cutthroat, shallow and insincere world of modelling.
I think IG knows all this, which is why he hasn’t given up hope. It may take years for Ella to grow up and wake up to what has been done to her, but he will always be ready to welcome her home. She is a desperately wounded soul who needs understanding and compassion, no matter how vilely she has behaved. It is best not to judge her by adult standards, but see her as the wounded, manipulated child that she is.

(Apologies for the essay. Returning to lurking - depression. Love to all.)

I agree that (in my opinion) she should be viewed as a wounded, manipulated child. Her actions, however, are abhorrent. I think it’s understandable that observers are horrified by her behaviour. That doesn’t mean said observers don’t understand her vulnerability and the monumental damage Alice has done.
Incidentally I don’t think there would have been a good time for Ioan to leave. Alice would still have weaponised Ella and encouraged things like the credit card theft and online abuse. He was damned if he stayed and damned if he left. I do wonder though, if he believed she would agree to shared custody purely based on her laziness. That might have been the one thing that surprised him.

 

[IHateHadargoyle]

Not one of us here is blaming Ella for what that “thing” has done to her. It’s hard to speak about the children without mentioning what many of us see based on a lifetime of experience with a narc family member. And remember it’s her 9 month hotel who has hurt, damaged, and abused Ella. Not us. The incident at the apartment in June really made it impossible not to discuss what’s happening in reference to the children. I am desperately sorry for anyone who has to spend one day with the “thing.” She’s a monster! It’s AFE calling her a “tedious witch” instead of throwing her a birthday party. That is what will make her recovery harder, not saying she’s a spoiled brat, needs her hair trimmed, a dentist, or needs new clothes. If she reads these threads she will see who is really on her side. And if it makes posters here upset to discuss the children then why not just make it a rule to not do it at all. It’s unfair to those of us who are merely making observations to paint us as unsympathetic people who say mean things about children. Many of us here on this thread have similar life experiences to Ella, myself included. I have always wanted one thing for those children. A happy life with love, guidance, healthy boundaries, adventures, fun, and understanding. MOO

 

[lanabels]

I’d love to see Alice try some of these hair styles. A deep conditioning treatment, a good cut and some loose waves. I think she might have been aiming for this when she did the granny curls for the nose picking selfie. It would be great to see her with a great cut and colour and some movement in her hair. I think it would soften her face tenfold and make her look much younger.

Id love to see a more icy blond with a few low lights insead of brass yellow