evidence: Meet Barry Dawson, The Man Who Faked Being Deaf And Dumb For 62 Years To Avoid Talking To His Wife. Barry Dawson is an 84-year-old man from Waterbury, Connecticut in the U.S. who faked being deaf and dumb for 62 years to avoid talking to his wife. [...] "My client is pretty quiet and not very talkative, but his wife is annoyingly chatty. If he hadn’t faked being deaf, they would have divorced 60 years ago. In a way, he did it for her and for his family," he said.