An estimated 20,000 cases are disclosed to maternity services in England every year. Two survivors tell their stories

Evie bought the baby monitor with a rare flicker of enthusiasm, having become increasingly numb as her pregnancy progressed. She liked that it would send video footage to her phone. “I thought, ‘This is really good. Not only can you hear the baby – you can see the baby.’” Unfortunately, her partner appreciated the monitor too. Soon she was carrying it around the house on his orders, so he could watch her. “He used it as surveillance,” she says.

By then she was worn down, and terrified. He had become more controlling since they learned she was pregnant. By the seventh month he had become physically abusive, too. “We were just lying in bed watching something,” she recalls of the first attack. “An argument broke out but it started getting overly aggressive … It just felt more threatening and he looked really agitated. So I ended up shimmying over and sitting on the edge of the bed. All of a sudden he just swung the biggest punch at my arm. Then he did it again. The impact was like whiplash.”