Natalie Curtis, 38, reported her husband to the police and says they dealt with it sensitively

'This is not love': victim of coercive control says she saw red flags from start

Natalie Curtis decided to leave her husband when he marched her to a pawn shop to sell her wedding and engagement ring.

“Something clicked,” she says. “I just thought, this is not love.”

That March incident was one of hundreds since they started dating in 2012 that Natalie now fully realises amounted to domestic abuse.

She ultimately walked out of the home she shared with her husband in Essex on 30 June – and just three months later on 3 October he was handed a two-year jail sentence after pleading guilty to engaging in controlling and coercive behaviour.

The Guardian understands the government is considering a review of the effectiveness of coercive control offence to improve understanding, raise awareness and increase the number of prosecutions.

As part of the domestic abuse bill announced on Monday, the statutory guidance and Crown Prosecution Service legal guidance for the controlling or coercive behaviour offence has been updated.

Natalie says she understands that controlling and coercive behaviour – with its absence of physical violence – is still an abstract concept to some, and wants to share her experience so others might recognise they are victims too.

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“The main reason for me to talk about what happened is I suffered so alone I became ill, and I don’t want people to get to that stage,” she says. “Nobody is alone. There’s lots of support out there.”

Women’s Aid says perpetrators of coercive and controlling behaviour are still not feeling full force of the law, despite it becoming a criminal offence in 2015.

In 2016 and 2017, less than 300 offenders were convicted for coercive and controlling behaviour. While the police have made some progress in how they respond to this crime, in the year 2017/18, police forces recorded 9,053 coercive control offences.

Natalie, 38, describes the first 18 months of her relationship with her partner, whom she asked not to be named, as “OK” but now she has removed herself from the relationship realises were “red flags from the beginning”.

Most notably, he constantly phoned her. Throughout their relationship, 30 to 40 phone calls a day would not be unusual. She answered them all, otherwise he would become angry.

It was after 18 months that they moved in together and his aggressive behaviour emerged. He would throw her belongings out of the house over the neighbour’s fence. He would shout at her and bang items on work surfaces. But these periods would pass and he would attempt to appease her with gifts and promises.

“There were times of intimidation and bullying but it was not constant, it was every now and then,” she says.

But the aggression always returned. He damaged her belongings, he smashed the kitchen. She would return from work and he would break out into a rage for no clear reason. Natalie started to question her sanity.

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“He started blaming everything on me,” she says. “‘I act like this because it’s your fault.’ Until the last year, I thought I was going insane. I would experience severe panic attacks and anxiety attacks.”

He also attempted to bring in Natalie’s family, sending them messages expressing concern about their mental health. “He was so clever in some ways,” she says. “Very manipulative.”

At one point in August 2017, he was arrested under the Malicious Communications Act, for making threats to kill over the phone. He was charged and handed a suspended sentence.

For a few weeks, Natalie left him. But he drew her back in with pleas for mercy. “He was saying ‘you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, I can’t get through this without you’. It was the guilt that kept me with him. I had started to completely neglect myself.”

Another year passed, and the relationship continued to worsen. “He was screaming and shouting at me. He lost control in public. It would really embarrass me. He’d shout ‘I hate you, fuck off’. It was horrible.”

After the wedding ring was pawned, Natalie started to video his behaviour – at first not to collect evidence but to reassure that she was not seeing or hearing things.

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“I recorded videos to check I [was] not going insane and because I knew I would have to take it to the police,” she says.

On 30 June, she called her friend and told her to pick her up. She arrived at her brother’s house and told her family the full story.

She resolved to report her husband to the police and she said the officers who dealt with the case went “way above and beyond” and dealt with her case sensitively and professionally.

She handed over her diary notes, messages, call history – and crucially – around 40 videos filmed secretly of his abusive behaviour. Natalie does not want the videos to be published, but they were played to Basildon crown court during his sentencing hearing.

“If you’re in fear of your partner, that’s when you have an issue,” she says. “If you’re too scared to even have a conversation.”

Katie Ghose, chief executive of Women’s Aid, said: “Survivors may worry that if they have no evidence of physical violence they will not be taken seriously by the police.”

She added: “We want to see the police and CPS working hand-in-hand to make sure that the necessary evidence is gathered, which doesn’t rely on the victim’s testimony, evidence of physical violence or, as in Natalie’s case, the victim putting herself at risk to collate her own evidence.”