Original subtitles

James was good-looking on his profile picture.

He looked nice, he looked fit.

It was just constant flattery.

Everyone wants to hear that, that you're beautiful.

Something just didn't sit right with me.

He didn't give off boyfriend vibes.

I just instantly didn't like him.

This man is a walking red flag.

The drinking was getting more and more. He would get a bit nasty.

It broke me, it really did.

So there's glass now everywhere,

blood from my head, blood from my mouth.

I just thought, "This is the last thing I'm gonna see before I die.

"He's gonna kill me."

I was a mobile hairdresser,

so I was busy, I was always out and about on the road,

got a big circle of friends.

I'd got a good life.

Erm... A bit lonely, maybe, on the weekdays

when your child's in bed

and you're sitting downstairs on your own,

but it didn't overly bother me.

Me and my mum are like that. She's my best friend.

It's always been just me and her.

As a person, she's very open and bubbly

and she'll have a chat with anyone.

Like, she's a really easy-going, talkative person.

You can always have a good chat with her.

I do socialise with my family a lot.

We're the youngest two from a big family. We're really close.

We work together, we socialise together,

do a lot of family things together.

She was always like my protector -

very outgoing, very popular, strong.

She'd be the one helping.

If there was a problem, it would be Paula you'd go to.

If there's a crisis, Paula will sort it.

That was always the way it was.

Although I appear to be confident to my friends...

..maybe not so much underneath.

I matched with a few different people,

had a couple of little chats,

but never really took much of it very seriously -

messing around, really, just looking what's out there.

I can't remember who messaged who first,

but James was good-looking on his profile picture.

He looked nice, he looked fit.

So, it was just purely looks.

We swapped numbers, eventually we were WhatsApping -

chit-chat, really. Nothing... No real plans to meet up.

He was a labourer, in between jobs at that time.

He'd been working on a building site.

When we talked about people that we knew in common,

that made me feel safe that he wasn't going to be...

..a lunatic,

or he wouldn't have that many skeletons in his closet

cos they'd come out.

I did ask a couple of people if they knew him,

and they were like, "Yeah, yeah, I know him. He's a good guy."

So, I thought I'd done my homework,

enough to believe what he was saying to me.

I think I messaged him one day when I was at a loose end.

I said I'd pick him up in my car.

He was staying with a friend who was a girl.

But he said that was just his best friend,

they'd known each other forever.

And he was staying with her just temporarily.

So, this is where we sat on the first date

for most of the day and night.

It's quite nice out here at night -

it gets warm and there's music.

Sun was out, it was a nice day.

I felt like it was going well straight away.

He was full of compliments from the minute we sat down -

"You're beautiful.

"You're prettier than I thought you'd be.

"I didn't think I'd meet anybody,

"but I've got a good feeling about you."

It was just constant flattery, and it was nice to hear it.

Everyone wants to hear that, that you're beautiful...

..especially when you don't feel it so much.

He has kind of opened the door of warmth

and compliments and, of course,

as any human being would do, who's being flattered,

you'd walk through and go, "I like it!"

My confidence was probably at an all-time low, really,

and hearing all these compliments was just what I needed

for a bit of an ego boost.

I didn't think...I was vulnerable in any way.

And that was the start of something terrible.

PHONE RINGS

Straight away, he was calling me and texting all the time.

He straight away wanted to see me again,

which I saw as a good sign.

I was quite happy about that.

I wanted to see him, too.

He was saying things like,

"When we go here" or "When we have a holiday,"

just things that he was planning ahead

from the first date.

I was just sort of on a bit of a roller-coaster of excitement.

He automatically wanted to start staying at mine,

and I was a bit uncomfortable with that,

but let him bombard me, really.

I didn't want to say no, so I let him.

Someone that pushy so early in a relationship

and almost ready to really push boundaries and push her boundaries,

when they barely know each other?

To me, that is a huge red flag.

I met James within the first week of Paula meeting him.

Obviously, I was eager to meet him.

It was her new partner and I wanted to see what he looked like.

When I met him at her house,

I just had an uncomfortable feeling about him straight away -

like, as if his feet were under the table too soon.

He was just being too comfortable there straight away.

CARRIE:He was there a lot. This was like within the first week.

I was like, "That's strange. Why is he there again?"

And he seemed to always be there.

ANJULA:She's like, "OK, well, he seemed all right at the beginning,

"let's see how it goes."

But he wants to just get himself embedded.

AMELIA:Something just didn't sit right with me.

They didn't look right together. He didn't...

He didn't give off, like, boyfriend vibes,

you know what I mean? Like, he was just very...

A bit weird. Just weird.

I had a bad gut feeling from the get-go.

CARRIE:We were going round for a barbecue,

and cos Paula was attentive to Amelia,

I could hear him say, "Just tell her to go upstairs,

just tell her to go upstairs."

This was like week one.

I just instantly didn't like him.

He tried to drive a wedge between everybody.

It started with Amelia. It started with her own daughter.

I would try my hardest not to be around him.

And if I knew he'd be staying at the house,

I'd go to my aunt's, or my nan's or a friend's.

I kind of distanced myself as much as I could.

REBECCA:Very early on, he is making her

choose between her own daughter and him.

Who does that?

Who makes you choose between your own flesh and blood

and your current partner?

That is not normal behaviour from someone.

That shows signs of someone extremely controlling,

doing that very early on, making her choose him.

I used to say to her, "You'll still always be my number one."

But she didn't like the thought of me having a boyfriend at all.

ANJULA:All her family, including her ten-year-old daughter at the time,

Amelia, did not like this person.

There were warning signs that other people around her were saying,

"Hang on, just wait a minute."

It did bother me that my family didn't like him,

but I thought they'd come around eventually,

once they saw I was happy.

REBECCA:Your family, your friends will see something that you don't.

So if your family and friends take a dislike

to the person you're dating, for me, another red flag.

I just hate saying his name as well.

I hate saying his name, but I know I've got to say it.

He'd planted seeds in my head that he was staying

with this female friend of his.

And why would I want him to go back to stay with another woman?

"Do you not think it's best if I just stay here with you?"

And I agreed. I was probably a little bit jealous of their friendship.

So then I thought, "Maybe it's best if he does stay here."

The speed in which we have gone from the first meet

to moving in, that is a red flag.

He wants this relationship to move quickly,

and they have only known each other a matter of weeks.

At the time, I was sort of in a bit of a love bubble.

It was the bubble of excitement and new relationship,

and he was talking as if me and him were a married couple almost,

straight away.

You know, I just thought it was because he was really into me.

And I really thought Amelia would come around

once she realised he was nice.

I would say that the situation Paula is in right now

is that she is withdrawing.

We are seeing her withdraw from her family and friends.

And then things began to change quite quickly, really.

PHONE RINGS

He would constantly phone, constantly bombard me with texts -

"Where are you? How long you going to be? I want to see you.

"Come back, I need to see you."

And it was relentless.

"Who are you with? Who are you really with?"

If I had a male client, "Well, who's he? How long have you known him?

"Has he got a girlfriend?"

If ever I was out with my sisters or even if I was with Amelia,

his name would constantly be popping up on my phone -

not that I ever managed to get away from him for long,

cos he would be demanding to see me again.

This is a huge red flag.

There's an element of coercive control

that's very quickly crept into his behaviour.

He wants to assert his dominance over her.

He doesn't want her seeing friends.

He doesn't want her working.

He wants to know exactly where she is.

It is that power trip, it is that authority.

She belongs to him now.

By now, he was... He'd got the passcode to my phone,

so he would pick up my phone and look in my phone

pretty much any time he wanted to.

ANJULA:He might be worried that somebody is saying to her,

"This guy is horrible to you."

He doesn't want any outside influence,

so he jealously guards any communication she has

with other people.

That strangulation over the communication

leaves her completely isolated.

It made me feel a bit anxious, but also,

I was making excuses for it in my head.

It was nice being loved, and I liked the feeling of being loved.

I was making myself believe, "He just misses me.

"He just wants to be with me all the time."

I wasn't overly concerned about that because I thought we were a couple,

so my money was his money anyway.

He was just slowly, slowly taking any bit of independence

that she had for herself away from her.

He kind of sort of stripped her down to nothing. So she had nothing.

REBECCA:We've seen him move into her house,

take control of her family, her life, and now her money?

When is this going to stop?

CARRIE:He wouldn't allow us to be around her.

If I was there, you could see...

..the resentment, and he'd take her away.

LAURA:She wasn't the same person.

She was distant.

It's like nothing mattered.

She didn't care.

She didn't even look the same, like, physically.

My best friend, Laura, he couldn't stand her.

We're really close, and she made her presence known on purpose.

She wouldn't go away and he kept saying to me, "She uses you.

"You need to get rid of her. You shouldn't see her, she's using you."

But she couldn't isolate herself from me

because I wouldn't let her.

I was killing them with kindness,

pretending that I was OK with the relationship.

He wasn't going to push me out of the picture.

REBECCA:There is that famous saying of

"Keep your friends close "and your enemies closer,"

but what we know is he is not one, probably,

to listen to a woman, full stop.

And, really, she was fighting a losing battle with it.

It soon became a bit more sinister.

The drinking was getting more and more.

I was noticing he would get a bit nasty.

And then the sexual pressure would be more if he was drunk,

and a bit more brutal. It was getting rough -

"Don't you fancy me? Don't you like me any more?"

I was put under pressure. I felt like I had to give in all the time.

On the other side of all this horribleness,

there were still the compliments -

"You're beautiful. I can't live without you.

"You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."

He said he loved me, and I didn't want to lose him.

She did things she did not want to do.

And that is not how you treat someone you love.

That is not how you treat someone you are in a relationship with.

He used to tell me things from his childhood

which excused his behaviour.

And I just thought if I loved him,

I could show him how to live a proper, normal life

and he'd be fine. I thought... I thought I could help him.

She's given him all her power in order to keep

the relationship, in her mind, in some kind of status quo.

But, actually, he continues to abuse her and be domineering over her.

It was always a drink-fuelled argument with us.

We went to a local pub of ours.

I could see he was getting aggressive again,

so I just said, "I'm going, I'm not doing this,"

and I got up and left.

I went home, went into my house,

shut the door, locked the door.

He showed up about maybe an hour later,

absolutely drunk out of his mind.

And he was banging the door to get in,

and I was saying, "Just go away."

LOUD BANGING ON DOOR And he was banging, banging the door.

All of a sudden, he just comes crashing through the glass.

GLASS SHATTERS

He'd literally burst into my living room.

Who does that?

That shows a level of violence that is sort of uncomprehendible, really.

ANJULA:What you've got here is a guy who is completely

in the mindset of, "How dare you do this to me?

"I'm the wronged party." He sees himself as the victim,

therefore he has the right

to behave in this completely outrageous way with her.

I was terrified, screaming, "What are you doing? Get out!"

And he sort of grabbed me by the throat,

and he was holding me up the wall by the throat,

and I had to bite his hand to get him off me.

It was... It was horrible.

SIRENS IN DISTANCE

I managed to call the police, but he ran off.

I made a statement about what he'd done,

and they were looking to arrest him after that. He disappeared.

I think she's absolutely right at this point

to be totally frightened

because you don't know what he's capable of.

Where is he going to go next with this behaviour?

He was begging me,

"Please don't do this. I'll go to prison.

"If I go to prison, I'm going to kill myself."

ANJULA:What he's done is made her responsible for his life.

And that's the bit that she's responding to

because she's a lovely human being.

And he knows that she's going to respond to that,

which is exactly why he's using it.

I knew we had to end the relationship, deep down.

But I still had that pull from him.

He'd always promise he'd change. He'd say he'd go to anger management.

"Please, I can't live without you.

"Without you, I'm nothing.

"I'll kill myself if I haven't got you."

It was so hard listening to him.

It was a lot of pressure to have from somebody

that you thought you loved.

Was it easier not to go through with it?

Probably was.

What he has done to her is made it impossible for her to leave.

By this time, I was going nowhere without him.

He'd even follow me to work.

I was really depressed, I was really low.

My family didn't know who I was.

I want Amelia to be OK and be back home,

but she wouldn't stay at the house when James was there.

That was breaking my heart.

I hated it.

I didn't want to be around him,

so I would always be at either my aunt's

or my nan and grandad's or I started seeing my dad

quite a lot around that time.

The more she wasn't around,

the more I was drinking to cover up what was going on.

And, actually, I didn't really want her there while he was there

because the violence was getting worse.

She became a lot more isolated and closed off,

she wouldn't go out much. Erm...

I didn't hear off her much.

And she just seemed very, like, stand-offish.

She looked destroyed. And she looked like that a lot.

Every day was a nightmare, every day.

I thought, "I'm going to use this opportunity

"to phone somebody and try and get some help."

I called 101,

and then the police came to the hospital

while I was there with my friend.

And they did what they call a DASH.

It is the checklist that we do so we can manage risk.

We can look at the answers given and really give a true indication,

when all the "red flags" are put together,

how dangerous is the perpetrator?

The police were concerned.

They were saying, "You've got to get away from this man.

"You know that, don't you?" And I knew I did,

And I was saying, "Yeah, I meant to, I wanted to."

And I was strong until I spoke to him.

PHONE RINGS The minute I spoke to him again,

he'd break me.

He used to send me photographs of packs of tablets.

I felt guilty that I was forcing him to do that.

I thought it was all the outside factors

that were making him the way he was, not him.

So I used to back down.

I got an appointment at the job centre -

it was in July, so it was nice and sunny.

PHONE RINGS I got a call on my mobile phone

from a withheld number...

..and it was the police.

They said to me that they had took the unusual step of

applying for a Clare's Law for me.

Clare's Law was set up by the father of Clare Woods,

who was a girl murdered by her boyfriend

who had previous for domestic violence.

This law came about to protect people against repeat offenders

and give people the right to know

who they were spending their life with.

You can do it on behalf of yourself.

Or if you're concerned about friend and family,

you can do it on behalf of them.

When the police do it on your behalf,

it's called a Right To Know, cos you have a right to know.

The police gave me the report and there was a lot on there,

a lot of previous offences.

I was in shock at first, and then I felt sick.

You can shake your phone or hold a button,

and everyone you want alerted to the fact you are in danger

gets alerted.

It is a brilliant app and it can save lives.

I should have been more alarmed that they were so worried about my safety

that they thought I needed an app.

Even though I'd seen a level of violence,

I didn't think he'd really try and hurt me that badly.

Because he'd got this 28-day banning order, he couldn't come to my house.

While he was away, Amelia was happier,

so I knew it had to be a permanent thing.

All of his tactics were starting to not work on me

because he wasn't with me every day.

So, then, he said, "I'm going to move to Scotland.

"If I can't be with you, I'm going to move to Scotland."

And I was encouraging it. I was like, "Well, that's a good idea."

You know, "Amelia's back with me and,

"you know, you can't be here, basically."

So, he said he'd got some things at my house he needed

to go and start this job -

"Will you meet me? I just want to say goodbye.

"I want to say I'm sorry and I just want my stuff."

Sounds very simple, doesn't it?

When, in reflection, what he's trying to do is meet her.

He has lost control of her.

He has lost control of the situation.

And now this is where it's going to start getting dangerous.

This man is a walking red flag.

I was due to go to a party -

all of my family were going to be there -

so I arranged to meet him at the train station.

He was getting a train from where he was staying.

I wanted him to see me OK,

cos I'd been such a mess during the relationship.

I wanted him to see me looking nice again and strong

and back to my old self.

He took one look at me, and he was like, "You're going on a date."

I said, "I'm not. I'm going to a party."

He was like, "I don't believe you. You're going on a date.

"You're not leaving me yet. Let's just go for a quick drink.

"I just want to talk. We can't leave it like this."

What he's witnessing is that she's all right without him.

He cannot stand her looking OK, happy and independent of him.

And what he wants to do is get her back under his control.

I should have walked away there and then.

But he'd still got a way of getting into my head.

An hour went - nothing, nothing.

PHONE RINGS

Not answering the phone, not answering the texts.

And I thought, "Something's not right."

In the pub, he straight away said, "You're not leaving me tonight.

"I'm staying with you." I said, "I'm going."

I went to walk back to the train station.

He was shouting abuse behind me,

which I was just ignoring and walking away.

But every time I looked back behind, I could see him.

ANJULA:Paula is in very grave danger when he follows her.

He is riven with jealousy, raging.

He feels vengeful, and he's like,

"How dare you do this to me?

"How dare you be separated from me?

"You're mine."

I jumped on the train,

and I couldn't see him for a while and I thought that was it.

And then all of a sudden,

I remember him just coming from one direction,

shouting and screaming at me.

Without her knowing, she is in an extremely dangerous situation.

Paula is in trouble now.

When I got off the train in Selly Oak,

I had to walk a little way to my house.

He snatched my handbag off me.

Everything was in my bag - my phone, my purse, my keys -

and he took my handbag. And he was like, "We'll go to yours."

The red flags - she is out of red flags.

He let us into the house cos he'd got my bag.

I was trying to...

..I don't know, reason with him.

I was trying to scare him as well,

thinking that my family would turn up,

and I thought that would make him run off, but it didn't.

DOORBELL RINGS I tried every tactic.

I tried pleading with her, screaming at her.

Tried to understand her, but nothing...

Nothing I said was getting through.

ANJULA:She knows that her family are right.

But I think, emotionally, there is a great deal of fear

which is charging her behaviour.

And it might not make sense to anyone but her

in that moment in time that "This person could do me

"a great deal of harm if you intervene,

"if anyone else comes into this picture,

"and I'm scared for my life."

I also wonder whether she's somebody who believes that,

you know, "I can talk them down,

"so let me just manage this on my own."

So, he'd gone, we went home.

But then we didn't know, in the meantime, he'd come back.

James locked all the house up, and barricaded the door.

And that was the start of...a pretty horrible night.

He was drunk, he was angry, he was a bit frantic.

Then the threats would start.

He'd push me around.

That went on for a few hours, this nonstop arguing.

I think this whole display is somebody who feels that

they're about to lose something that's theirs.

This kind of almost domestic stalker has turned into this violent abuser

because he thinks he is the victim.

He's not.

He smashed the phone into my mouth

and all the glass broke in my mouth, off my phone.

I was bleeding by this point.

Now I'm shouting and screaming, hysterical again,

and I'm trying to get away from him.

He pulled me back by my hair, slammed me up the wall.

I remember being on the floor in the corner of my bedroom,

and he was stamping on my back, saying,

"You're cheating on me, you're cheating on me!"

There was a glass at the side of my bed,

and he brought this glass down, and, luckily, I turned my head

and it sort of smashed on the side of my head.

Otherwise it would have been straight in my face.

So there's glass now everywhere,

blood from my head, blood from my mouth, and I'm screaming.

Can I have a minute?

SHE SIGHS

And he... Yeah... And he raped me.

I was looking up at my ceiling

and there was, like, a crack in the plaster.

And I remember lying there, thinking, "He's gonna kill me.

"This is the last thing I'm gonna see before I die."

And then he put this pillow over my face,

I just thought, "Stop moving."

I thought, "I'll scare him into thinking I'm dead."

So I just kept still.

He ripped this pillow off me,

and I was like, "Look, I'll give you the passcode."

So, he gave me my phone back and I shook the phone,

which alerted my emergency contacts in the Hollie Guard app.

For her to think about that just speaks volumes.

The fact that she could be going through

a torturous situation - both physically and mentally -

and still think to do that? She is a real fighter.

She's brilliant.

As we got onto my driveway,

one of my neighbours was over the road, working on his car,

and I just ran to him and said, "Phone the police.

"I've been attacked."

So James ran off, then.

LAURA:When I got to Paula's house, she looked terrible

and started crying in my arms straight away.

And I just knew that I had to speak to her on her own

to find out what was going on.

When I walked to the bedroom, I was like,

"Oh, my God, what's happened here?"

Her bedroom was smashed up, there was glass everywhere.

There was blood on the wall.

And then that's when she told me that he'd raped her.

I just remember asking her,

"Have you had a shower? Where are your clothes?"

I was worrying about the evidence,

knowing that something serious had happened in there.

It was disbelief to start with.

I was just concerned about how I was going to

ever put it right for her, for Paula.

I didn't think she'd ever come back from it, to be honest.

LAURA:Just seeing how horrific her injuries were then...

..it was heart-breaking.

I remember looking up at her,

and her tears were falling on my face,

and we were both crying.

I just remember thinking, "How have we got here?"

I kept Paula safe with me in a hotel,

just for that night, so we could just go to sleep and have a rest.

I watched Paula sleep all night.

I just couldn't shut off what I'd saw.

AMELIA:I hated seeing my mum, how upset she was.

She was just broken.

She's always been a very strong person,

so I've never seen her, like, break down like that.

It broke me. It really did.

I just wasn't confident they were going to catch him.

I was glad that he was that stupid to come back to Birmingham.

I phoned the police straight away. I said, "James is in Birmingham."

And then not long after that,

I got a phone call from a withheld number.

I answered it thinking it was the police.

It was James.

And I could hear the background noise,

the sounds of the machines and stuff.

I could tell it was the Wetherspoons.

I hung up on him, I called the police straight back,

and they'd got him. POLICE SIRENS BLARE

It feels a bit weird being back here.

When I look up at the windows, up at the top there,

where the witness room was,

it does take me back to sitting, the anticipation and the fear of

giving evidence in a Crown Court trial.

I think he believed that I wouldn't turn up

to give evidence.

But I'd had time away from him,

so I'd got myself back a little bit more.

I'd got my family and friends around me.

I'd got a bit more strength back,

and I wasn't going to let him beat me.

The thought of seeing him scared the life out of me.

I didn't want to look at his face.

The last time I'd seen his face

was when he'd done what he'd done to me.

And it wasn't nice knowing he was on the other side of that screen

as well, but just not being able to see him

helped me get through what I had to do.

The court experience wasn't as bad as what I thought

it was going to be. I think I'd built it up a lot in my head.

And how I was treated in the courtroom was...

..better than I expected it to be.

I looked over at the dock

and he was shaking his head in disbelief.

And I just looked once more at his face and walked away

and left with my family.

As we walked down the steps of the court, "I thought, we've done it."

You know, "We've got rid of him, he's gone."

You know, "We've actually got him."

I definitely think getting him convicted helped me

put my life back together.

So, yeah, it was great.

That was a good day for us all, a really good day.

REBECCA:A female victim of any crime,

whether it be sexual assault, domestic violence,

it's so important that they speak to the police.

Even if you don't feel confident enough

to fully go through a court proceeding,

even reporting it to police gives that Clare's Law the ammo.

So if you do leave that relationship

and the perpetrator starts up a new one

and that person applies for Clare's Law,

at least they'll know that they have a history of it

and it's not their fault.

I think about it all the time.

Trying to understand it, I suppose. And...you can't...

You can't believe that we lived it.

I've been diagnosed with PTSD.

I did for a long time have terrible nightmares

and night terrors.

I'm still on antidepressants.

Erm...

But I'm in a lot happier place.

I met Andy about 18 months ago in a pub,

but we knew each other from, like, about 30 years ago,

when we used to go clubbing when we were teenagers.

Words can't describe how much I love her.

I just think the world of her. She's brilliant.

Just can't imagine spending my life with anybody else.

She's like my soulmate.

AMELIA:Andy's lovely. He actually treats her well.

He's really good to me. He's good to both of us.

All the family love him because he's got a very kind heart, bless him.

Seeing her how she is now, we can relax a bit more.

She's happy, which is something I didn't think

she would ever be again, to be honest.

Amelia, nobody will ever come between us again.

She's just the best person ever.

It's definitely brought us closer, a million percent.

I wouldn't say Paula missed any red flags.

She ignored them because he made her do so.

The level of control and manipulation

and grooming from the offset that he displayed towards her,

it's no wonder she did.

It does happen to people who you wouldn't expect it to.

But life can get better - and hers has.

Very proud of Paula.

I don't recognise the person I was then

to who I am again now.

But I've been ashamed of it for a long time.

But I've also learned that I wasn't to blame.

He's to blame and not me.

Life's good now.

It's all turned out nice in the end.

Preuzeto sa www.titlovi.com