I FEARED HE WAS GOING TO KILL ME
A WOMAN left bloodied and bruised by her fiancé has spoken out about the night she thought he was going to kill her in a drunken rage.
Lauren Richmond now hopes to encourage other women to open up about their abusive relationships after her ex Jordan Greaves admitted assaulting her.
The 22-year-old met Greaves in April 2015 when she was working as a lifeguard at Hafan y Môr holiday park near Pwllheli, and later moved to his home town of Huddersfield to be closer to him.
Lauren was in a relationship with Greaves, 23, for two years before finding the courage to speak out about the physical and emotional abuse she suffered at his hands.
They had been seeing each other for two months when she moved to Huddersfield, but says she quickly began noticing changes in his attitude towards her.
Sheh claimsl h he physicallyh ll attacked her on numerous occasions and she would try to escape by climbing out of a window.
Lauren said: “He would lash out and I would try to get away but he’d pull me to the floor. I ended dd up in hospitalh l once after he fractured my hand.
“Now that I am out of the relationship, I can see the emotional abuse and control started very early on.
“He would comment on my clothing and tell me not to wear certain things, and controlled how I looked, including my make-up.
“He wouldn’t let me have male friends and he made me block all of them on Facebook.
“As the control got worse, s so did the mental abuse, and before I knew it the physical abuse was happening m more often than not.”
Lauren, who is originally f from Wolverhampton but s spent her teenage years in G Gwynedd, added: “I knew it w was wrong for me to stay with him, but he would always tell me what I wanted to hear – ‘I’m sorry’, ‘it won’t happen again’, ‘I’m going to get help’. I believed him every time.”
On May 1, Greaves attacked Lauren when she tried to stop him from driving home drunk after a night out celebrating a cricket win.
Kirklees Magistrates’ Court heard that Greaves had been drinking heavily with friends and decided he wanted to drive home, despite Lauren and his team-mates trying to stop him.
A blood test showed that he had 156 milligrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood – almost twice the legal limit.
Speaking about that night, Lauren said: “I got in the car with him and tried to stop him but he lashed out and punched me repeatedly. It only stopped when I managed to wind the window down and scream for help.”
A nearby resident heard Lauren’s cries and took her inside until the police arrived.
She decided to press charg- es against her fiancé and leave him for good.
Lauren said: “No one should go through this but I promise you, if you don’t leave it will get worse.
“All it would take would be for him to hit me in the wrong place and it could be a different story. I could be dead.
“I thought he was going to kill me that night. Don’t let that be you.”
Greaves, of Elm Street, Skelmanthorpe, pleaded guilty to assault and drink-driving and was sentenced to a community order with 180 hours of unpaid work and was banned from driving for 20 months.
He was given a restraining order banning him from contacting Lauren for a year and must pay her £250 compensation.