You’ve probably heard or even experienced a story like this – the marriage which goes badly wrong and the breakup which gets horrendously worse. Sometimes things will even descend to violence, and those charged with sorting out the damage are stuck with trying to discern the truth from the lies and the good guys from the bad guys.
A former US Army Ranger from Florida has strapped a GoPro camera to his belt to catch his estranged wife forcibly grabbing his genitals during a contentious custody handover.
‘This is just one of many instances where I’ve had to use the camera to either prove her guilt or prove my innocence and that’s the only reason I am carrying it,’ the solider, identified only as ‘Michael,’ told the station 10News.
Michael, a resident of Pinellas County, has been locked in a drawn-out custody battle with his spouse, 37-year-old Corinne Novak, over their 2-year-old twin boys. The couple are also in the process of getting a divorce.
The husband has accused Novak of domestic violence, and in order to prove his claim he took to tying a small camera to his belt using a parachute cord during his encounters with her.
Michael’s GoPro was rolling when he met his wife last Thursday to exchange custody of their sons.
The video, obtained by 10News, opens with the retired solider reaching into the back of his car to unbuckle one of his sons. Suddenly, he lets out a scream and jerks his body back.
Upon closer inspection, the blurry footage shows what appears to be Corinne Novak’s hand in the bottom right corner grabbing her estranged husband’s testicles.
Novak is then heard off camera yelling at Michael: ‘call the police. I’m gonna tell them that you just assaulted me.’
When Michael shared the video documenting his alleged assault with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, it was enough to have Corinne Novak arrested on a domestic battery charge.
It’s a sad case, and one can only hope the twins don’t have their childhoods ruined by the behavior of their parents. But it’s a good example of one of life’s truths: one of the worst mistakes one can make in life is a bad personal association, and one never knows how bad an association really is until one attempts to extricate oneself from it.