‘He made me sit outside his work all night and didn’t let me eat or sleep, before nearly killing me and my unborn child’
SOPHIE Henson was 36 weeks’ pregnant when her boyfriend tried to strangle her.
The pair were driving through a rural part of Bridgend when Pennell pulled over and launched at her throat.
Sophie said she could feel her skin turning blue and felt certain she was about to die. Pennell then ran into the woods and left Sophie alone, injured and vulnerable.
Over the course of their four-year relationship, Pennell controlled Sophie and made her life hell.
He made her feel trapped and worthless, as though she couldn’t live without him.
However, “coward” Pennell, 27, is now in prison while Sophie is slowly but surely piecing her life back together. She has bravely chosen to speak out to offer hope to other survivors and victims of domestic abuse.
Speaking to our sister paper the South Wales Echo, 23-year-old Sophie said she first met Pennell through a mutual friend in 2020.
Just 19 years old at the time, Sophie described how she had low selfesteem and had never had a real boyfriend before.
Although she was alarmed at the rate their relationship progressed, Sophie said Pennell went out of his way to make her feel special until she was attached. She said: “I was really overweight at the time and I thought it was the best relationship ever.
“He bought me flowers and kissed me in front of my friends. He would say, ‘Look, I’m interested in you, not them’. He properly showed me off from the start.”
But by the second week of knowing Pennell, Sophie said things began to take a sinister turn.
He became jealous about the fact Sophie had children and demanded that her mother moved out.
She said: “It went extremely quickly. I had known him a week and a half when he asked my mum to move out. We were then basically living together at mine.
“He didn’t accept my children and he said contact with their father had to be done through my mum.”
Sophie described how Pennell’s deep insecurities saw the pair fall into a toxic routine.
He knocked Sophie down with insults and made her feel like she needed to prove her worth and earn his trust.
She said: “I would pick him up from work at 5.30am. I would get home and he would stay awake until 12pm smoking and I would have to stay awake and clean.
“In this time I was not allowed to eat, I had to fast and lose weight because he said he ‘couldn’t take me out’ because I wasn’t presentable.
“While he was at work he would make me sit in the freezing cold in my car outside his work. He said it was because he didn’t know me as a person and I needed to prove that I wasn’t cheating on him.
He said it was dodgy that I already had kids and that I needed to show him that he could trust me. At 3am I would have to go home to clean before picking him back up at 5.30am. We did this whole routine for a year.”
Sophie said she lost so much weight during this time, that people often didn’t recognise her. By the second year, Sophie said Pennell was out of work which took a toll on him.
During this time, she said the abuse got even worse.
“It became awful in the house,” she said. “I wasn’t allowed food and I had to beg people to lend me money.
“There were times where my mum came to my house and I had to scream at her to leave me alone because she wasn’t allowed to talk to me.”
Sophie said Pennell gradually became more aggressive and controlling. He would often hide her car and house keys under his pillow, so that she was not free to leave and enter her own home as she pleased.
If she wanted to make a phone call, he would make her do it on loudspeaker in front of him. He insisted on knowing where she was at all times.
On several occasions she described how Pennell forced her to look at herself in the mirror while saying degrading things about herself.
She said: “I would have to stand in front of the mirror and say I am ‘fat’ and ‘useless’. I would have to repeat lines after him.
“He would say that girls are better than me because they have better figures, that I will always be worthless and that I’m a weirdo. He would also say horrible things about my family.
“If I wouldn’t say something, there would be three levels where he would push my head forward. On the fourth go he would push my face into the mirror.”
For a length of time in 2022, Sophie said the pair broke up. During their break, she explained how she fell pregnant, which made her particularly vulnerable.
She said Pennell promised her that he would change and that they could be a happy family.
“He said we could move on with the baby and that he wouldn’t hold [me getting pregnant] against me,” she said. But despite his promises, Pennell’s behaviour towards Sophie did not improve.
She described how Pennell did not want anyone to know she was pregnant, so made her wear baggy clothing. He also prevented her from going to scans and medical appointments relating to the pregnancy.
The first time Sophie had a scan, she was 32 weeks’ pregnant. She said it only came with the help of the police and social services, who had been trying hard to help her safely leave Pennell.
She said: “Around May 2023 I had to ring my social worker. I rang her and said, ‘Please don’t talk, please get the police to arrest me tomorrow morning’. I hung up and deleted the call. The police came and I was able to have a scan, when I discovered I was 32 weeks’ pregnant.”
Sophie explained how the police and social services were trying hard to help her to leave Pennell, but that for there to be any action, she would have to press charges herself or provide them with hard evidence.
She said this can make it difficult for victims to leave a cycle of abuse.
She said: “I could not thank the police enough, how they kept their patience with me even when I kept telling them nothing was going on.
“They kept trying throughout three years of the relationship. Female officers would tell me their heart was breaking for me, they tried so hard.”
Among those trying to support her were workers from the Bridgend council-run Assia Domestic Abuse Service. At one point, Sophie said she was put on a 72-hour lifeline which she could use to get emergency help if she felt as though her life might be in danger.
Days after this ran out, Sophie said that’s exactly what happened.
On June 12, 2023, she explained how Pennel became angry during a car journey in Aberbaiden lanes, Bridgend. They were on their way to a field where her horse was kept.
Around 36 weeks’ pregnant at the time, Sophie claimed he pulled her hair and squeezed her throat, before doing it all over again.
“I got out of the car and he jumped out and put me back in and said this was on his terms. He was scrunching
my fat and calling me names. He was accusing me of sleeping with family members and people I didn’t even know. He would calm down and then talk himself back into it again, saying I ‘deserve it’.
“While he [squeezed my throat] I thought I was going to die. I don’t know what possessed him to stop, whether it was when he felt my body tense up as he knew I was nearly out of it. There were times when I lost consciousness and he would say, ‘ You’re not dying on me yet’.
“At one point he thought I did die, I was mostly unconscious but I could hear him panic. I finally came around and he said, ‘Why would you do that to me’, before strangling me again.
“I felt the pain go from zero to one hundred in seconds. My body had had enough.”
Sophie said Pennell then ran into the woods and left her in the car. In a terrified state, Sophie said she managed to drive her car a few minutes to the nearest house she could find. She knocked on the door and begged for help.
She said: “After all this happened I drove to a house. I was screaming but I remember not hearing a voice come out of me. An elderly man pulled me in the house and said, ‘ You are completely safe’. He called his wife to help and they were so lovely. They made me a glass of water and helped me ring my [family member]. I was taken to the Princess of Wales Hospital, where I was for a few days. Luckily my baby was completely healthy.”
Following the horrific incident, Pennell was arrested and a date for his trial was set. However, ahead of the trial Pennell entered guilty pleas for coercive control and intentional strangulation.
His pleas were entered on the basis that he denied accusations of violence within the relationship, as well as violence other than strangulation during the June 12 incident.
Although Sophie was relieved that she didn’t have to go through a trial, she said part of her was disappointed that she didn’t get the opportunity to share her perspective in full in court.
She said: “Ahead of the trial date, I wasn’t myself at all. I haven’t slept properly for three weeks and it felt like the walls were closing in on me.
“The thought of speaking in front of a jury and trying to plead with them to understand me while worrying that he would twist their arm.
“I got to Newport Crown Court on the day of the trial and I had been up since 4am that morning preparing myself. Eventually when we got there we waited for about three hours and then they said he’d pleaded guilty.
“It felt horrible, I thought, ‘Why does he keep getting a say over me?’ I had prepared and worried myself for nothing.”
Instead, Pennell – of Park View, Bryntirion, Bridgend – was sentenced at Cardiff Crown Court on Monday, January 15.
Prosecuting, Andrew Davies described Pennell’s abuse towards Sophie as “persistent and of a prolonged period”.
He said it involved multiple incidents of coercive control which was intended to “humiliate and degrade his victim”.
Defending Pennell, Andrew Sharp told the court how this was Pennell’s first conviction as an adult, adding that he had no previous relevant convictions involving domestic abuse.
He said his defendant had been struggling with the loss of his mother and had been diagnosed with a personality disorder during the 26 weeks he had spent in custody.
He said: “Has used his time in custody very productively and has taken steps to address his behaviour.”
Addressing Pennell for sentencing, Recorder Caroline Rees KC said: “It’s very clear to see what grave impact this had on her and how terrifying your actions were on her, particularly strangulation on a woman going into her 36th week of pregnancy.
“She was a passenger and you pulled the car over at the farm, putting pressure on her windpipe. She must have been terrified – not only for herself but for her unborn child.
“Like a coward, you ran away and left her to seek help from an elderly couple so she could ring her uncle.”
She added that he should be “ashamed” of his behaviour.
She said it was to his credit that he had engaged with medical treatment and counselling while in custody and sentenced him to a total of 21 months in prison.
She also handed him a restraining order, preventing him from contacting Sophie for the next five years.
Sophie said although she has been left traumatised by what happened to her, she finally feels hope for her future.
She said: “I now have hearing and memory loss and I get scared of everything, I’m not like I used to be and I don’t feel happy very often and I have found that moving forward is harder than I thought.
“I wonder how it got this far when outsiders could see it more than me – telling me ‘one day he will kill you’.
“It’s been hard realising that I didn’t know him and that I made him up in my head – [the love] was never real.
“However I am settled now and my life is looking up. I’ve been to a festival and I have done a lot more with my friends. I see my mum regularly, I can actually go for a coffee with her and have a hug off her without feeling bad. I’m looking to get a horse in the future and to get my car sorted. I’m really trying to get my life back on track. I have hope now.”
If you, a family member a friend, or someone you are concerned about, has experienced domestic abuse or sexual violence, you can contact the Live Fear Free Helpline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for free advice and support or to talk through your options call 0808 801 08 00.