I’m absolutely terrified about the new release changes because I genuinely feel like survivors need more protection. I just don’t agree with people being released so early when they’ve committed serious offences. When I heard about the 33% coming in, I honestly couldn’t believe it. I just kept thinking, how is this protecting survivors?
Years ago I got with a guy who battered me and knocked me unconscious. He went to prison and there was a five-year restraining order put in place. There was also MAPPA put in place, but when he got out after about a year, the MAPPA disappeared and he was allowed to live back round the corner from me. I had to learn to face my abuser every single day. It was hard. And I think I was still trauma bonded to him, which is the worst thing. Not enough people talk about trauma bonds and how powerful they are. Because of the way they manipulate you, gaslight you and destroy you, you can end up going back to the person who is hurting you.
So I ended up getting back with him. Stupid me. I ended up falling pregnant, having a miscarriage, and then falling pregnant again. Looking back now, I realise how much manipulation and abuse I was living through and how much I didn’t understand about domestic abuse at the time. I didn’t know what trauma bonding really was. I didn’t know about Clare’s Law. I didn’t understand all the warning signs that I understand now.
Then things got even worse. Weeks before the most serious incident, he strangled me while I was holding my baby. We had just come out of hospital. He was literally strangling me while holding my baby and said, “Put her down and I’ll finish the job.” I couldn’t breathe. There was an incident where he’d gone out of his face, come back and basically battered me around the kitchen to the point where he threw me into the corner of the cabinet in the kitchen. I could have probably been unconscious again. Then he was verbally attacking me and going to hit me while I was holding my baby in the kitchen. Thank God I had CCTV cameras because there is footage of what happened in the kitchen.
Then he came to my house and drove his car into it. Before he did it, he came to the house three times. There is CCTV of him driving up, hitting his fist on the bonnet and saying that if I didn’t let him into the house he was going to put his car through it. Then he actually did it. He drove straight into the house and the whole front of the house collapsed. How is that not intent? The CCTV literally shows what he was saying beforehand and then shows him doing it.
I managed to get the footage back from the Ring camera and I gave it to the police. I had already told them that I had all this evidence. While he was on remand, I knew he couldn’t get to me and hurt me, and I thought finally, I’m safe for the moment.
But then I started finding out just how much history there was behind this person. He had already been to prison for GBH and there were other things in his history that I didn’t know about. I found out about things through the police records and what was coming out during the case, and I honestly felt ashamed of myself that I had ever had this person around my life without knowing all of this.
And that’s what really gets me. I didn’t know. I didn’t know about Clare’s Law. I didn’t know what domestic abuse actually looked like. I didn’t understand trauma bonds. I didn’t understand how someone could make you feel like you couldn’t live without them.
He was eventually charged with criminal damage with intent to endanger life, criminal damage being reckless as to whether life would be endangered, driving while disqualified, no insurance, driving under the influence, intentional strangulation, assault and sending communication calls in reference to me trying to leave him. I was getting texts saying things like, “Murder scene tonight” and “I’ll kill you” because I had tried to leave him weeks before.
He originally pleaded not guilty. Then months later, while I was on holiday, I got a phone call from the victim liaison officer telling me he had changed his plea to guilty. I remember thinking, yes, this is finally over. He’s going down for a very long time.
I genuinely thought because of what he’d done and because of his previous history that the sentence would reflect how serious it all was. I was told he could be looking at something around four years to potentially a much longer sentence, and I was thinking, finally, there is going to be some justice here.
Then I found out he would effectively only be doing a much smaller amount of time because of the time he’d already spent on remand and the way time served works. He’d already been on remand for around six months, which counted towards his sentence, and then I was hearing about the changes bringing release down to 33%.
I just think it’s absolutely diabolical.
This isn’t just somebody who has made one stupid mistake. This is somebody who has already been to prison for serious offending, who has already battered me and knocked me unconscious, and then years later tried to kill me.
So why should he be let out?
I’ve now moved three hours away. I’ve moved house and started completely fresh. I’ve done absolutely everything I can to rebuild my life, but I’m still scared because I know what he’s capable of. People think when you leave, the abuse stops. It doesn’t. You can move. You can change your life. You can put orders in place. But you’re still worrying about whether that person will find you.
I now have an indefinite restraining order in place. I’ve been told there will be MAPPA involvement when he gets out and that there will be conditions stopping him contacting me. I’ve also been told that if he breaches it, he could be recalled. But honestly, I don’t know what to believe anymore.
I’ve had a five-year restraining order before and he broke it. When I took him back to court, he only got an extra 12 months on a community order. So why wouldn’t I be worried about another order being broken? Why would I automatically feel safe because there is another piece of paper in place?
A restraining order doesn’t physically stop somebody from coming after you. It can protect you legally, but when you’ve experienced someone seriously hurting you, you know how quickly something can happen.
It takes seconds.
I still don’t understand how someone can do what he has done and then be given another chance again. You’ve already had the opportunity to change. You’ve already been to prison. You’ve already been given rehabilitation. You’ve already had chances. And then you go back and commit serious offences again.
At what point do we actually say enough is enough?
I’m not saying people can’t change. I believe in rehabilitation. But rehabilitation has to mean something. If someone repeatedly commits serious offences, there have to be consequences, and there has to be proper consideration of the risk they pose when they are released.
I also think people need to understand that domestic abuse isn’t just someone hitting you. It’s manipulation. It’s gaslighting. It’s coercive control. It’s threats. It’s making you believe you’re nobody without them. It’s destroying your confidence until you don’t even recognise yourself anymore.
I had my mental health used against me. I’ve got bipolar and for a long time I was in denial about what was happening to me. But I’m medicated and I’ve had it under control. My psychological assessment has even said that if I wasn’t medicated, there would be more signs of my bipolar. Yet my mental health was still something that could be used against me and used to try to make people question me.
Now I’ve done courses. I’ve learned about domestic abuse. I’ve learned what trauma bonds are. I’ve realised how serious it actually is. And I’ve realised that there are people out there who can help you.
It’s just a shame sometimes that you have to go through so much before you find those people.
I’ve always been a rescuer. Someone said to me, “You were a rescuer, but you’ve rescued the wrong people in your life and they’ve taken advantage of you.” That really hit me.
Because I don’t want to rescue the wrong people anymore.
I want to help people who are actually in the situation I was in.
I’m training so I can help other people. I want to save people. I want to be there for people who don’t understand what is happening to them yet.
Because I was that person.
I didn’t understand domestic abuse properly. I didn’t understand trauma bonding. I didn’t understand how dangerous it could become. I didn’t know about Clare’s Law. I didn’t know what questions I should have been asking.
And now I look back and think, if I’d known then what I know now, maybe I would have made different decisions.
I’m healing now. I’m very nearly healed, and I feel like I can finally speak about everything I’ve been through and tell the truth about it.
I’m so excited about life now because I’ve started again. I’ve moved away. I’m rebuilding myself. And I want to use everything I’ve been through to help somebody else.
I just don’t want another survivor to have to go through what I’ve gone through before someone listens.
I don’t want somebody else to have to be battered, strangled, threatened or terrified before people take the risk seriously.
I just think there needs to be more campaigns about this.
Because survivors need protecting.
And if somebody has a history of serious offending, has already been to prison and then goes on to commit serious offences again, why are we giving them another chance without properly asking what the risk is?
Why are we not taking the warning signs seriously?
That’s what I don’t understand.
If they’ve done the crime, they need to do the time.
And survivors shouldn’t have to spend the rest of their lives being scared of what happens when their abuser gets out.
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This is exactly why we are campaigning.
Reading this survivor’s story, I keep coming back to one question: when there are so many warning signs, why aren’t we taking them seriously?
How many times does somebody have to offend before we stop looking at each offence in isolation and start looking at the pattern?
How many times does a survivor have to live in fear?
How many times does somebody have to breach an order?
How many warnings do we need before we say, this person has repeatedly shown us what they are capable of?
This isn’t about saying that nobody can change. It isn’t about saying rehabilitation doesn’t matter. Rehabilitation matters. Reducing reoffending matters. But victim safety has to matter too.
And this is exactly why the conversation around the new one-third release point matters. Under the Sentencing Act 2026, many offenders serving standard determinate sentences can have a minimum release point of one-third, while more serious standard determinate sentences have a minimum of 50%. The exact rules depend on the offence and sentence.
For survivors reading stories like this, though, percentages aren’t just percentages.
They’re dates.
They’re release dates.
They’re the moment you start looking over your shoulder again.
They’re the moment you start wondering whether you’ve moved far enough away, whether your address is safe, whether your restraining order will be respected, whether the person who hurt you has actually changed.
And that’s something I don’t think the system always understands.
Domestic abuse is not a single incident.
It can be a pattern of violence, threats, intimidation, manipulation, coercive control and psychological abuse that can continue long after the relationship has ended.
Government statutory guidance itself recognises that perpetrators can manipulate victims, professionals and agencies, minimise allegations, discredit victims, make counter-allegations and use systems and other people to continue exerting control.
So when a survivor says, “I’m frightened this person is going to hurt me again,” I believe we have to ask why.
What has happened before?
What orders have been breached?
What previous convictions are there?
What further offences have occurred?
What is the pattern?
What is the actual risk?
Because if we only look at one offence, one sentence or one release date, we can miss the bigger picture.
And there are so many of us who didn’t truly understand domestic abuse when we were living through it.
We didn’t know what coercive control was.
We didn’t understand trauma bonds.
We didn’t understand why leaving could be so difficult.
We didn’t understand why we kept going back.
We didn’t understand how somebody could destroy your confidence and make you believe that you couldn’t survive without them.
We didn’t know about Clare’s Law.
We didn’t know what questions to ask.
And we shouldn’t have to learn all of this through surviving it.
The scale of domestic abuse shows why this matters. The latest ONS figures estimate that around 3.8 million people aged 16 and over experienced domestic abuse in England and Wales in the year ending March 2025 — 7.8% of the population. Around 12.5 million people, or 25.8%, had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16. Police recorded 816,493 domestic-abuse-related crimes during that year.
Those aren’t just statistics.
Those are millions of people trying to live their lives while carrying something that most people will never see.
And behind some of those statistics are survivors like the woman whose story you’ve just read.
People who have left.
People who have moved.
People who have changed their lives.
People who are trying to heal.
And people who still have to think about what happens when their abuser walks out of prison.
So I keep asking:
How much fear does a survivor have to live with before their safety is taken seriously?
How many warning signs are enough?
How many previous offences are enough?
How many breaches are enough?
And for families affected by domestic abuse, there is another question we cannot ignore:
How much trauma can children be exposed to before we take the mother’s safety and wellbeing seriously too?
Because children don’t need to be physically attacked themselves to be affected by domestic abuse.
They can live with fear, instability, manipulation and the consequences of what happens around them.
And government guidance recognises that perpetrators can use children and family proceedings as part of patterns of coercive control.
This is why Beyond the Sentence UK exists.
We are not saying every offender should simply be locked away forever.
We are saying that when somebody has a serious history of offending, particularly where there are repeated warning signs and a continuing risk to a victim, that risk needs to be taken seriously.
We need a system that doesn’t just ask, “When can this person legally be released?”
We need one that also asks:
“What does this release mean for the person who has spent years trying to survive them?”
Because a sentence belongs to the offender.
But the consequences of release can be lived by the victim.
And survivors deserve to be part of that conversation. 💜