Get the stories that matter to you sent straight to your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

A MOTHER who was nearly beaten to death by her former partner has been ordered to send letters to him in jail – or risk being sent to prison herself.

A judge has told Natalie Allman to write to her ex-fiancé Jason Hughes – who tortured her for seven hours in front of their twin sons – three times a year.

The 29-year-old is being forced to send photos and updates on the boys, five, due to parental rights laws.

The twins were just two when they saw their father batter their mum with his weight-lifting dumbbells, slash her throat with an Army knife and try to ­suffocate her with a pillow.

If Natalie refuses to write, she will be held in contempt of court and risks being locked up herself.

The devastated mum told our sister paper the Sunday People : “I feel betrayed that after everything he did his rights mean more than mine – more than my children’s.

“We are the victims, not him. I thought he was going to kill me that night for no reason and my boys saw that. They were terrified.

“I’m so angry that the law still defends his parental rights and that he is still being allowed to control us from behind bars.

“As far as I’m concerned he gave up the right to contact with any of us the night he attacked me but the court doesn’t see it that way.

“What about our rights to get on with our lives and forget the trauma he put us through? As long as we are in constant contact how are we going to do that?”

Natalie ended her relationship with Hughes in February 2012 two months before their planned wedding because of his excessive drinking.

The spurned Territorial Army ­part-time soldier, who was still staying at their house in Hereford, went ­berserk one night after discovering she was seeing someone else.

(Image: Newsteam/SWNS Group)

Natalie said: “He’d never been ­aggressive before, just controlling and he drank too much.

“We’d been separated a few weeks but he was still staying in the house until he found somewhere else.

“He found out that I was seeing someone else and the jealousy just sent him over the edge.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and he was kneeling over me, beating me repeatedly in the face.

“At first I thought he was punching me and then I realised he was using his weights.

“He was smashing them into my face over and over. There was blood everywhere but he didn’t stop.

“It was midnight and then the next thing I knew I was coming round and it was 3am. I don’t know whether I fell asleep or was knocked unconscious.”

Hughes went on to attack Natalie at 3am and again at 6am, tying her up so she couldn’t escape.

The knife wound missed a major artery by millimetres.

Hughes refused to call an ambulance, but at 7am Natalie managed to dial 999 herself. When officers arrived, the couple’s two-year-old twins, Ethan and Timmy, were in bed with their mother and covered in her blood.

Miraculously she survived the attack despite eight wounds to her head and five broken bones in her face.

In August 2012 Hughes was ­sentenced to nine years at Worcester Crown Court for malicious wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

His lawyer said: “His intention was to cause a hideous scar she could not hide if she had dressed up to look pretty. He was trying to make her look ugly to other men.”

(Image: SWNS Group)

Natalie began ­rebuilding her life with her twins, her new ­partner Wayne Young, 43, and their baby boy Aaron, now two.

But last January she was shocked to receive a letter from Hughes’s lawyer saying he was applying for a Residence and Contact Order under Section 8 of the Children Act of 1989.

Natalie, who needed cosmetic surgery on her throat after the savage attack, said: “I got a ­letter asking for six letters a year and phone calls on their birthdays and at Christmas.

“I never thought for a second that he would be granted any contact after what he did. I tried not to think about it.

“It seemed so unlikely anyone would take his side over mine.

“But he put the ­application in and then just before Easter last year I got asked to go to court.”

While Hughes’ expensive lawyers were funded by legal aid Natalie had no representation. She shelled out £3,000 of her savings on solicitors fees to fight the request but shockingly the order was granted.

The negotiated terms stated that she would have to send letters three times a year – at Easter, September and December.

The order requires that the letters include “an update regarding the ­children’s general progress, both at nursery/school and socially, to include details of their health and emotional ­development”.

The letters must also include an “update photograph of each child no smaller than 6 inches by 4 inches”.

Hughes, 42, is also allowed to send birthday cards, Christmas cards and a letter at the start of each school year. Yet most shocking of all is the threat of legal repercussions for Natalie if she fails to complete the gruelling task of writing the letters three times a year.

She said: “I read the order and felt sick that I was going to have to ­communicate with that man after what he did.

“I wanted to just ignore it and get on with my life with my boys.

“But then I read the notes at the end. They said, ‘If you do not comply with this contact order you may be held in contempt of court and be committed to prison or fined’.

“I couldn’t believe it. I could end up being split up from my children and sent to prison when he was the one who ­attacked me. I’m the one being treated like a criminal.”

Natalie had no choice but to adhere to the order despite objections by her victim support workers. Hughes has also been sending letters under the court ruling but Natalie finds them sickening.

She has been ordered to keep them in case the boys want to read them in the future.

In one letter he brags about his soft time in prison and boasts: “I got a X Box and now I just can’t put it down L.O.L. I just forget to eat or drink when I’m playing it. L.O.L. Then I look at the time and it about 5 in the morning.”

He also brags about his life as a prison bee-keeper, winning prizes for his artwork and eating fresh organic fruit and veg from the prison allotment.

The letters go to Natalie’s father’s home so that Hughes doesn’t know her new address.

She said: “We were at my dad’s house for the boys’ birthday in January and the envelope with their cards was waiting.

“I’d kept the other cards and letters for them to see when they were older but something made me show them that one.

“Timmy opened it up and said, ‘Is it from the nasty man in prison?’.

“I told them it was from their dad in prison and he screwed it up.

“Then he gave it to Ethan who screwed it up some more and told me to put it in the rubbish bin.

"I told them I had, but then later I had to flatten it out and put it in the file in our bedroom with all the other letters because if I don’t follow the order and keep the letters I could end up in prison myself.

“They know Jason is their daddy but they tell me they don’t want him any more.

“They want Wayne to be their daddy and he wants to adopt them but he can’t even do that unless Jason gives consent.”

Natalie fears the contact with her attacker – who could be out of prison as early as March next year – will only encourage him to come and find them.

She said: “I have been promised we’ll be ­protected and we’ll have alarms fitted in the house as well as a geographical ban stopping him from coming to our town.

“But how can I trust the authorities when they have made me do this?”