Perthshire Advertiser

I felt worthless - it was a very scary and lonely place

Danielle opens up about abuse she endured from ex

- DOUGLAS DICKIE

A Perth woman who suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her partner has told the PA how he made her feel “worthless”.

Danielle Crighton was subjected to a six-month campaign of abuse and disgusting name-calling via text and social media by Robbie Singh.

At one point, Singh ordered Danielle to kneel on the floor and beg for forgivenes­s for being “such a slut”.

Brave Danielle (30) has now opened up to the PA in the hope it encourages others not to suffer in silence.

“I want to get it out there and show other people that it’s ok to speak out,” she said.

“I want to make people aware and, most importantl­y, make them aware of him.

“If I save just one person from going through this then it will have been worth it.

“If I had to use one word [to describe how she felt] then it would be ‘worthless.’ It was a very lonely and scary place and I was very, very low.”

Thirty-one-year-old Singh appeared at Perth Sheriff Court twice towards the end of last year in relation to the abuse.

In November, he was fined £1125 and ordered to pay the victim £1000 after he admitted engaging in a course of abusive conduct towards his partner on various occasions between June 1, 2019, and January 15, 2020, at a house in Perth, at The Loft nightclub in South Street - and elsewhere.

A three-year non-harassment order was also imposed.

The court heard Singh told Danielle she was not allowed to have any “straight” male friends and he would attempt to control what she wore - and he monitored her online presence.

His catalogue of coercive behaviour included him launching a foul-mouthed tirade at her in texts and on WhatsApp, branding her a “slut” and calling her a “clown” and a “disgusting, psychotic, pathologic­al liar.”

And when she arranged to tour Europe with a friend, he became angry and tried to persuade them not to go.

They went anyway but he fired off abusive messages and then sent a text saying he had “sawn his hand off” and that he was going to kill himself.

During the hearing, it emerged Singh had narrowly escaped a jail sentence at Glasgow Sheriff Court after attacking Danielle by repeatedly punching her on the head and body whilst he believed she was pregnant.

Instead, he was ordered to complete 300 hours of unpaid work, was restricted to his home from 7pm-7am for four months, and told to attend the Caledonian Programme, set up to help men convicted of domestic abuse.

Singh was back in the dock at Perth last month when he admitted that between December 1, 2019, and June 1, 2020, he engaged in a course of abusive behaviour by repeatedly sending Danielle messages in which he called her derogatory names.

The court heard that, when confronted with his litany of vile rants, Singh, of Edinburgh

Road, claimed they had been “a joke”.

His sentence was deferred until May 19.

Danielle said the pair had worked together at ENABLE, but “never spoke too much”.

That changed during a chance encounter in a

Perth nightclub in January

2019 and they soon started dating.

However,

Danielle said she started to notice changes in his demeanour early in the relationsh­ip.

“There were certain behaviours that started to show,” she explained.

“At the time, I didn’t really pick up on it as being abusive.

“He had given me the whole sob story about how his ex had left him. I felt a bit sorry for him, I wanted to be there for him.

“I started to confide in people about it when it got really bad in May or June of 2019. It just escalated from there.

“A lot of [the abuse] was very subtle, things that you didn’t even notice at the time.”

Describing the incident where Singh forced her to beg

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