Anthony Busuttil used to violently assault his wife Miriam; sources say girlfriend Larisa was terrified of him

It is as we suspected. Sources who are familiar with the Busuttil family have contacted me to say that Anthony Busuttil’s marriage to his wife Miriam, with whom he has four children aged 40, 35, 33 and 32 and 11 grandchildren, deteriorated and then broke up in a slew of violent abuse, assaults and the involvement of the police.

The sources said: “He treated Miriam horribly. He hit her and subjected her to constant verbal abuse. He once hit her so hard in the back with a silver frame” – Busuttil sells jewellery and silver – “that the blow would have floored a man.” The same sources said that his marriage ended “around 11 years ago” because of the abuse and his infidelity, but Larisa Leontieva was not the cause. “He had other women.”

The same sources said that they have no information on whether Leontieva ever called the police, but “she was terrified of him”.

“When they went out, she would keep herself to herself and take care not to look at or speak to anyone except mainly him. If he thought that she had glanced at another man while they were out, he would lay into her as soon as they got into the car,” the sources said. “The boy is scared of him too. He doesn’t want that boy. He’s got four grown children and all those grandchildren and he’s not particularly bothered about them. He is only interested in taking him away from his mother and using him as bait and blackmail to get her back.”

Meanwhile, earlier this morning I received an email from somebody I know, who was seated at a restaurant close to a table at which Anthony Busuttil, Larisa Leontieva and their son Adam were seated shortly before she fled from him in Prague. He didn’t know them, but when he saw the photographs on this website, he remembered that incident. He wrote:

“He was dismissive of her, rude to her. If I were to talk to my wife the way he spoke to her, she would chop my goolies off. I was struck by the dismissiveness of his tone, his harsh voice and accent telling her, in an indirect way, that she is worthless and useless. She looked so resigned. She had the stance of somebody who had given up. He was humiliating her. He was so old, rough and unattractive, and she was so much younger and better-looking – I assumed that it was her son but not his, that she was putting up with that man to give her son a better life because she was a single mum and had no choice. At one point he left the table and I was so tempted to go up to her and tell her, you do not need to be with such a nasty man. He sounded so stupid, so arrogant, so conceited, so awful, so typically Maltese man.”

Now Anthony Busuttil’s words, as quoted in the press, make more sense: “to see your son like that, terrified of you…” and “sometimes, anger is good”.