Phoebe Burgess has hit out at her ex-husband’s appearance on SAS, calling it a “carefully curated comeback” as she details her abusive marriage.
Phoebe Burgess has hit out at ex-husband Sam’s appearance on SAS as “a careful edit, a carefully curated comeback show.’
In the Weekend Australian, Burgess has also taken aim at NRL officials for not getting the Rabbitohs star the help he needed. Sam Burgess admitted during his winning turn on reality show SAS that “personal issues turned me to drink and drugs.”
“I live every day as though I have been through a loss. I loved him dearly. I miss him so much,” Phoebe Burgess told the paper. “But he wasn’t handled. He wasn’t looked after. He wasn’t protected in the right way, in the way that may have – not saved our marriage, but it might have led to a true rehabilitation, a true sense of responsibility, owning behaviour, wanting to change that behaviour. Instead of what I’m seeing, disappointingly, being a careful edit, a carefully curated comeback show.”
Sam and ex-wife Phoebe split in October 2019, after four tumultuous years of marriage.
She recalls a “call in the middle of the night” back in 2017 when she found out her husband had been having an affair with a Melbourne woman.
“That was probably the worst night of my life. I felt physical pain when I found out about that. I howled for about two hours on the ground,” she said.
Burgess said that while pregnant with their son Billy in late 2018, she underwent multiple tests for sexually transmitted infections as a result of her husband’s cheating.
In addition, Burgess says that she was also subject to Sam’s “substance-induced screaming rages.”
“These were things that I shouldn’t have been tolerating in a relationship,” she said. “I was still protecting someone who was broken and behaving in such an abhorrent way, you know, leading up to the birth of my son, the drugs, the alcohol, partying, the benders, the begging.”
She says she was so desperate to avoid angry outbursts from Sam that she went to great lengths to ensure he wouldn’t erupt.
“I’d spent a day with my newborn and Poppy, I was tired and I was sore and I knew Sam would get home at 4pm. So I cooked something and made sure I looked really nice. Because I just couldn’t handle another explosion. If everything was perfect … then maybe it would work out. Even at that point, I knew it wasn’t normal to be on edge when you’re waiting for your husband to come home from work. It wasn’t normal to be putting lipstick on when you’re trying to feed a newborn. It wasn’t normal to try to account for every hour of your day. Explain it. So he wouldn’t call you lazy or a c**t. You know, I just – so much had been taken away from me, so much dignity.”
Burgess said she was contacted by multiple women who said they had slept with Sam, many saying they were shocked to discover he was married.
“I felt like I was living with a man that I just didn’t know. I felt guilty that this person who was my husband, who was meant to be in a committed relationship with me, was actually hurting so many other women. At the same time, I felt that I had missed something. I thought it was up to me to try and fix him, to make sure that didn’t happen. And if everyone just kept quiet, maybe it was something that we could deal with.”
She said his NRL club the South Sydney Rabbitohs not only turned a blind eye but helped cover up his behaviour.
“There were things that the club knew that I didn’t,” Burgess says. “I was kept in the dark in my own marriage.”
This week, Sam Burgess won the TV show SAS, in which he revealed a lot of regrets he had about his marriage and his behaviour.
“I don’t think I was the greatest husband at times,” Sam Burgess said. “I embarrassed my wife. I’d had an affair with a girl, a woman in Melbourne. That’s true. I was away on tour, and regretfully that happened. Which would have been … it would have been a tough place for Phoebe to be.”
Sam Burgess, who retired from NRL due to a shoulder injury in 2019, spent four weeks at Gold Coast Detox after he was caught driving with traces of cocaine in his system while on his way to pick up his children in February.
Phoebe meanwhile is living with the couple’s two children in the Bowral area near her parents.