A woman has bravely spoken out about what it is like to live with a domestic abuser after enduring six years of torment by a man who only referred to her as "a fat ugly c***".
Leah Collard told of her ordeal after her ex-partner, 29-year-old David Rhys Williams, pleaded guilty to assault and a public order offence earlier this year.
After only a month into the couple's relationship, Leah begun to feel mentally controlled which later escalated into physical violence, Wales Online reports.
She said: “The first behaviour that I noticed was about a month in.
"I wanted to go out with my friends and he said: ‘No – I don’t like your friends, they are trouble, you are not going out with them’. Throughout our six-year relationship I never went out once.”
On one occasion, Leah secretly made a voice recording on her mobile phone when she realised an argument was brewing, and captured the moment he tried to strangle her - despite knowing she was pregnant with his baby.
During the clip, recorded on New Year's Eve 2013, Leah can be heard saying “Get off me, get the f*** off me” - all the while Williams is giggling has he torments her. Williams has confirmed to WalesOnline that he is the man in the recording.
“Don’t do that to me – I am pregnant!” Leah can be heard screaming. “You will make me have a miscarriage with your f***ing child. You want to kill your child do you?”
Williams can then be heard to reply: “Who gives a f***? Who would want a baby with you? You are a f***ing s**t.”
In the recording she says she will call the police and Williams replies: “What is 999 gonna do? Give me 120 community service hours?”
At one point a clearly terrified Leah can be heard confronting her then-partner. She tells him: “You just strangled me. Get out the house you f***ing woman beater. I am getting my son away from you.”
Williams replies “Get an abortion”, before adding: “All you do is push me and push me. Do you know what happens to people who laugh at me? End up in hospital with life-changing surgery. I don’t give a f***. That is who I am.”
All the while, Leah's other child can be heard coughing in the background - clearly witnessing the attack.
At one point, after Leah says Williams has just strangled her, he replies: "Yeah – so what?"
Towards the end of the recording, during which Leah appears to call the police at one point, Williams can be heard screaming again and again at her to rip up her pregnancy scan photos.
“If we’re over rip them up,” he says. “F*** you, f*** me, and f*** this family.”
Leah found it difficult to leave over fears how she would cope financially as a single mother.
In one of the recordings, Williams can be heard saying he will cut himself if she leaves him.
Now she is campaigning to men and women suffering domestic abuse to seek help via Clare's Law. The law enables a member of the public to make enquiries into a partner of a close friend or family member.
The turning point for Leah came when social services threatened to take her children away.
After the assault in April, which Williams admitted at Cardiff Magistrates’ Court, she received a letter from Vale of Glamorgan council saying the relationship had previously been “recognised as ‘high-risk’”.
The letter said: “We have been informed that you intend to resume your relationship with Mr David Rhys Williams.
“Our department has a number of concerns that this relationship is detrimental to the wellbeing of your children who may in turn be at risk of significant emotional harm.
“Additionally in resuming the relationship it may be seen that you are failing to protect your children by exposing them to domestic violence.”
They said they would consider further proceedings. It was then that Leah finally left Williams.
“I feel like I don’t have to walk on eggshells anymore but my anxiety is through the roof,” she said. “There is a two-year restraining order but what happens after the two years?
“I am fed up of just being this horrible little victim.
“I walk around but when I am in Barry visiting my family I get really nervous that I will see people who know him and they might do something.
“I don’t want this anymore. I want people to understand how he treated me. I want people to understand what I went through.”
