A woman who claims she was groomed into a fake relationship with a predator for three and a half years, says he was finally unmasked by his other girlfriend.
Catherine Garrod is now calling for a change in the law after she says she was trapped by a manipulative man.
The 38-year-old said she met her boyfriend on the Plenty of Fish dating app and he said he was "keen to settle down like his mum and dad".
Ms Garrod said: "He was charming, very attentive and keen to progress the relationship quickly, which I’ve now discovered is known as 'love bombing' and as soon as I committed, he pulled back and the relationship never progressed."
She would try and leave only for the love bombing to start all over again.
Three and a half years into the relationship a woman contacted her, having found a Whatsapp message on her boyfriend's phone.
The women quickly realised that neither of them was the affair, and their boyfriend was living a double life, one Ms Garrod says he's family and friends were aware of.
They had both been sent identical love notes from him and worked out he was on holiday with one, when he told the other he was away for work.
She said: "We joked about him having all the makings of a serial killer, which triggered us sharing that more recently he’d been telling us how much he’d like to kill us and how easy it would be.
"He’d either pin us down with his full body weight, throw a punch full force and stop just before making contact, or clamp his hand over our mouth and nose so that we couldn’t breathe.
"We went to the police and were told living a double life wouldn’t meet the threshold for coercive control, as he didn’t control what we wore, who we spent time with or our money.
"So instead they charged him for common assault against me, as I had dates and times of him threatening to kill me."
The case went to Staines Magistrates’ Court in February, but he was cleared of the charge.
Ms Garrod was inspired to share her story after watching Labour MP Rosie Duffield’s account of her own experience of domestic abuse in the House of Commons.
She has also called on the government to define ‘leading a double life’ as a form of domestic abuse and has launched a change.org petition.
