Paul Chivers was in casualty on a Sunday evening with a bloody towel around his head, when he decided that he had to get his wife out of their family home. Earlier that evening, his nine-year-old daughter Tess had saved his life by shouting, “Stop!” as his wife repeatedly hit him with a hairdryer, until his head had split open.

In A&E, contemplating the decade of abuse he had suffered at the hands of his wife Meena, Paul knew it needed to end. At home, Tess and Meena were asleep in a bed soaked in blood.

“People always ask me, ‘Why did you stay?’” says Paul, now 49. “My answer is always the same: because of my daughter.”

Paul, a secondary school teacher, met Meena, a special needs teacher, at the school where he worked. “There were early warning signs, but you see things through rose-tinted glasses when you first meet and are planning your life together,” he says.

Meena’s abusive behaviour began when Tess was born. She cut him off from his family and banned them from their daughter’s christening. Then she became violent. She jabbed keys into Paul’s chest, beat him and smashed a painting over his head. She would kick him out of the house in the middle of the night, humiliate him in public and once abandoned him on the roadside 60 miles from home, with no phone or wallet.