Nicole Addimando met Christopher Grover in 2008, when they were coaches at Mr. Todd’s Gymnastics, in Poughkeepsie, New York. At first, they were just friends. Addimando lived with her mother, Belinda, in an apartment complex that Belinda managed. She was nineteen, tiny and delicate, with inky-black hair that fell down her back like a scrim. Her sister described her as shy and introverted. Grover, who was twenty-one, had a gymnast’s build, short and powerfully muscular. People who knew him described him as charming, childlike, and playful, if sometimes short-tempered. He loved video games and had a black belt in tae kwon do. Addimando called him her best friend.

After they started dating, Addimando later said, she told Grover that she had been sexually assaulted by a neighbor when she was five years old. He told her that they didn’t have to rush into a sexual relationship until she felt ready, and they waited for about a year. But, when they did start having sex, sometimes she would ask him to stop and he wouldn’t.

In 2011, Addimando started working at a nursery school. She loved her job, her sister later said, and had always wanted children of her own. The following year, Addimando became pregnant, and she moved with Grover to the town of Salt Point. Money was tight. On and off, she saw a licensed clinical social worker, Robin (Dusty) Nason, for counselling sessions, and slowly confided in Nason about the assault she suffered as a child. After her son, Ben, was born, though, she quit seeing Nason. She quit her job at the nursery, too, and was building a small photography business. One day, in February, 2013, when Ben was about six weeks old, Addimando said that Grover made a sexual advance toward her, and, when she declined, he slammed her face into the door frame of Ben’s room, then forced himself on her.

Grover, she said, began to develop a penchant for forced sex. Addimando wondered if she was doing something to bring on the abuse or if she was obligated to allow him the kind of sex he wanted. She learned that Grover had videotaped one of the sexual assaults without her knowledge. She brought the camera and memory card with the footage on it to Nason’s office and played some of it for her. “She was mortified,” Nason told me. “She was, like, ‘What did I do wrong? Did I not say no enough?’ . . . She was scared to death to confront him.”

By September, 2014, Addimando was living with Grover and Ben in an apartment in Hyde Park and was pregnant with another child. One morning, she was in the kitchen, taking her prenatal vitamins, when she shrugged off a kiss from Grover. She testified that he bit her on the shoulder and slammed her face onto the counter, twice, then sexually assaulted her. Two days later, pain was still radiating up from her jaw and she couldn’t chew. She called Sarah Caprioli, who worked at Family Services, a victim-assistance program. Caprioli convinced her to obtain a forensic-nurse exam at Vassar Brothers Medical Center. In notes, the examiner wrote that Addimando spoke in “barely audible whispers.” She refused to file a police report. She believed that, if she did, Grover would retaliate by taking Ben away from her.

Two days after this exam, as Addimando was fixing eggs for Ben’s breakfast, Grover told her that she’d better be making enough for him, too. “Yes, sir,” she replied sarcastically. Grover, she said, forced her to the floor, admonished her for being disrespectful, put a metal spoon into the gas flame on the stove, and assaulted her with it. Caprioli accompanied Addimando to another exam at Vassar Brothers Medical Center. The report describes Addimando as “nervous, whispering, poor eye contact, shaking.” The examiner took photographs of her injuries, which included a bite mark on her shoulder and burns to her breasts, thighs, and genitalia. Caprioli again encouraged Addimando to report Grover to law enforcement, and again she refused.

Addimando and Grover’s second child, a daughter they named Faye, was born in February, 2015. In the course of that year, Grover became fixated on pornography. Addimando testified that he began to construct homemade sex toys out of PVC piping, cement glue, and athletic tape, and he would insert them into her vagina and anus. He tied her up. He fashioned a rubber ball into a gag. He assaulted her vaginally with a gun. He used the belt from her bathrobe to strangle her until she almost passed out. She often had black eyes and bruises. Caprioli administered a domestic-violence risk assessment, which placed Addimando in the highest-risk category for homicide. (Criteria included sexual assault, abuse while pregnant, gun ownership, and strangulation.)

Addimando discovered that Grover was still filming the abuse. He uploaded the videos to PornHub, under the user name groverrespect, with titles like “Bound and Pound” and “Break a Bitch.” She said that he saved the videos on external hard drives. In November, 2015, advocates from Family Services contacted Jason Ruscillo, a detective in nearby Hyde Park. Ruscillo learned that Addimando had been making allegations of abuse and that pornographic images of her were appearing on PornHub without her consent. For the meeting with Ruscillo, Caprioli prepared an affidavit attesting to the abuse Addimando had described, but Addimando refused to sign it.

Addimando made several visits to a midwife, Susan Rannestad. (Rannestad shares a practice with the midwife who delivered Faye.) She told Rannestad that she was worried about losing custody of her children. She was also concerned that Grover would allege that her injuries were self-inflicted. At one visit, in the spring of 2017, Rannestad could not complete a pelvic exam because of the extreme swelling around Addimando’s vaginal and anal areas. Her “insides were on the outside,” Rannestad said.

On September 26, 2017, Addimando and Grover received a call from Child Protective Services. The agency had received an anonymous report from a mother whose child attended Mr. Todd’s Gymnastics, who was concerned because she had learned of Addimando’s injuries and had witnessed Grover losing his temper with his students. The following morning, C.P.S. visited Addimando and Grover’s apartment and interviewed them separately. Afterward, at Grover’s behest, Addimando began calling people whom she thought C.P.S. might contact for information about the couple. By the time Grover returned home that night, she had called her sister and Grover’s parents, brother, and boss, asking them to tell the agency that everything was fine. Addimando feared that C.P.S. would discover the years of abuse she had endured and would take away her children, who were then four and two. But she also hoped that the agency’s investigation might motivate Grover to change his ways.

At approximately 2 A.M. the next morning, a police officer named Richard Sisilli was travelling south on Taft Avenue, in Poughkeepsie, on his way to a call, when he stopped at a traffic light behind a red Dodge Caliber. When the light turned green, the Dodge did not move, so he sounded his air horn. Nicole Addimando got out of the driver’s side of the car, wearing only socks on her feet. Ben and Faye were inside, in car seats. Sisilli later testified, “She told me she tried to leave, but he said he would kill her. . . . She said he’s still in the apartment and the gun had just gone off.” Sisilli put together the pieces of the story as she told it: that there was a fight, that she thought her boyfriend would kill her, that she had shot him, that he was lying on the couch.