'Trust your instinct and get help, report it to the police because there is support out there and a life after that relationship.'
Two women, who were violently assaulted by their former partners, have bravely gone public with their stories in a bid to encourage other women not to be afraid to come forward and report the perpetrators.
Mum-of-two Jenny had put the previous incidents down to stress and said she always found a reason to justify his actions. Jenny was sleeping beside her three-year-old daughter when he dragged her by the hair up the hall to their bedroom. He then straddled her on the bed and strangled her with both hands around her throat, telling her he was going to kill her.
"I had begged him to stop and said that if he did this, he would cross a line and there was no way back for us." "When you're in that situation, you believe that it will change and have hope that the person you fell in love with and the promises they made to you, that you'll get back to that. It's not bad all the time and there's a lot of good periods in the relationship.
The former couple had been living together for five or six months when the first incident took place in June 2019. "My jaw was sore for days afterwards and when I told him I needed to go to hospital, he said I could go, but once the bruising died down. He didn’t allow me to go to hospital until 10 days later and only because I couldn’t eat or drink and I was forced to lie to the hospital staff about what had happened."
"He went to punch me in the face but stopped with his fist close to my face while foaming at the side of his mouth and his teeth clenched. He broke a door and some furniture in the house and I contacted police to say my partner was getting violent while my children were in the house," she said. "I'm so happy it's all over and relieved to have the truth finally out there. I have no regrets about speaking out and if I can just help one more person, it will be worth it," Stacey added.
In the run run up to the launch the PSNI revealed that women and girls in Northern Ireland are disproportionately affected by violence, abuse and intimidation.