When Rachel first met her "charming" ex-boyfriend at a house party as a teenager he seemed like the perfect man. They began dating, and at first, everything seemed great.
But after a few months the fairy-tale he'd spun began to unravel. Rachel, which isn't her real name, started noticing his "spiteful" and "narcissistic" traits.
He isolated her from her family, and stopped her speaking to her young daughter - who lived apart from her. Then, around a year into their relationship, the physical abuse started.
He would go missing for days at a time, and giving the mum-of-one reason to suspect he'd been cheating on her. READ MORE: Join the FREE Manchester Evening News WhatsApp community But when she questioned him about it, his reaction was terrifying. "He would push me into things, slap me, and broke three of my phones in six months," Rachel said. "When it wasn't physical it was emotional.