On the sixth anniversary of her brother’s suicide, Gessica Notaro, a dolphin trainer and former Miss Italy finalist, thought that she would die too.

As she returned home from dinner with friends on 10 January, the 28-year-old had acid thrown in her face, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend Jorge Edson Tavares, 29.

The attack left her badly disfigured and almost blind in one eye, and Notaro claims her attacker picked the date on purpose. “He was well aware that it was the anniversary of my brother’s death,” she told the Observer at her home in Rimini, on Italy’s Adriatic coast.

Tavares, with whom she lived for three years, is in custody but denies any involvement. Notaro appeared in court for the trial of her ex-boyfriend on charges of stalking last week.

She revealed her horrific injuries for the first time when she appeared on Italy’s Maurizio Constanzo chatshow, and told viewers: “I want you to see what he did to me. This isn’t love.”

The case has captured the public’s attention in a country where attacks involving cheap and easily obtainable corrosive liquids are on the rise. There were 27 registered assaults in 2016, compared with eight in 2013, according to data provided by police to SOS Stalking, an organisation set up to support the victims of harassment.

This figure may pale in comparison with England, where in London alone there were 454 such attacks last year. But within the context of Italy’s high rate of femicide – 116 women were killed by their partners or ex-partners between January and November last year, according to figures from the national statistics agency – the phenomenon is worrying.

“England is quite different from Italy in that many of the cases there are between gangs of men,” said Lorenzo Puglisi, a lawyer and founder of SOS Stalking. “But here some 90% of acid attacks are against women by former boyfriends who can’t accept that the relationship is over. Acid is their most destructive tool, a way of saying ‘If I can’t have you, then nobody else can either’. It’s partly a cultural problem because many people still see women as objects to be owned by men.”

Notaro, who was crowned beauty queen of the Emilia-Romagna region in 2007 before going on to reach the finals of the Miss Italy beauty contest, fell in love with Tavares when mutual friends brought him to a gathering at her home in 2013.

Gessica Notaro and ex-boyfriend Edson Tavares. Photograph: Alamy

Tavares, whom she described as being the perfect gentleman, asked her mother’s permission before he moved in with her a week later. “He had a strong, stubborn character, and we argued like any normal couple, but he was never aggressive towards me while we were together,” she said.

Notaro, who found Tavares a job alongside her at Rimini’s dolphinarium, said the trouble began last August, when she turned down his marriage proposal and ended the relationship.

He then allegedly began a campaign of harassment, bombarding her with phone calls, text messages and following her every movement during a six-month period, which brought on severe panic attacks. She claims he staged a fake suicide outside her home in order to get her sympathy.

“I had anxiety before due to losing both my brother and my father, but during this period I was living a nightmare,” she said.

Notaro reported the harassment to police and Tavares was eventually given a restraining order after he allegedly threatened to destroy her life. Fearing acid might be his weapon of choice, she kept a helmet in her car to wear on the short walk between the car park and her home whenever she returned after dark. On the night of the attack, she didn’t have it with her.

Tavares allegedly pounced, pouring an entire bottle over her, as she opened the car door to get her bag.

“My first thought was, ‘My God, he actually did it’. I expected it but still couldn’t believe it had happened.”

As her face started burning and the reality of the horrifying ordeal set in, the thing she feared most was losing her sight. “I started to pray – if I survive, take away my beauty, but please not my eyes. What would I do without my eyes?”

Notaro, who has also worked as a TV presenter, singer and dancer, spent two months in hospital and underwent several operations, including one to save the sight in her left eye.

She has to wait a year before she can begin reconstructive surgery. Meanwhile, she takes a cocktail of medication almost every hour, including eye drops and creams to ease the pain. She has difficulty sleeping, as she is unable to close her eyes, and struggles with eating and speaking.

The high-profile case is similar to that of Lucia Annibali, a lawyer whose face was left badly corroded after her former boyfriend, Luca Varani, hired two men to douse her with sulphuric acid as she returned home one night in 2013. Varani, also a lawyer, was sentenced to 20 years in prison a year later.

Tavares faces up to 12 years if charged and found guilty of causing serious injuries, said Puglisi. That would be on top of a conviction for stalking.

Italy introduced laws in 2013 to crack down on violence against women after being shamed by a UN report, which said domestic violence was the country’s “most pervasive form of violence”.

“In recent years police have increased their knowledge about acid attacks, so we now have agents who are equipped to deal with cases,” said Puglisi.

“The problem is we don’t have the budget to prevent this kind of crime. In Britain, GPS is used to track stalkers. In Italy, we’re testing GPS but it’s not being used as it should be because we don’t have the money. This is a very big issue, because using this kind of thing could cut this type of crime by half – in the case of Notaro, this could have been the solution had the man in jail been tracked.”

Annibali, whose face was reconstructed after almost 20 operations, has become the symbol in the campaign to stop violence against women, a role Notaro, who was visited by Italy’s justice minister, Andrea Orlando, last week, is starting to take on herself.

Since the attack, she has been inundated with messages from other victims of stalking and abuse seeking support. “Even after everything, I still have my strong character,” she said.

“And now I feel useful in helping other people. I will continue to campaign, which I know in itself will be a challenge – but after having acid thrown in my face, very few things frighten me now.”