Clare’s Law: ‘He could have killed me and the police didn’t care’

Darcy’s relationship with her former partner moved quickly in its early stages.

She said: “It was immediate ‘I love yous’, ‘I want you to move in with me’. At the beginning, it’s the honeymoon stage and you kind of think everything’s perfect.”

But things began to change.

“He had me questioning my own beliefs on things and thinking maybe I’m behaving wrong in this situation. I wasn’t,” she said.

“From a coercive control perspective, I’d say I was definitely being controlled.”

Initially Darcy, from Reading, Berkshire, could not see the red flags. But her mum, Sarah, could.

“I had a gut feeling that something was off, a mother’s instinct,” she said.

“I knew that the only way I was going to be able to really show her that there was something not right with his guy was if I got it from the police.”