NAILED.. BY OWN VIDEO
COWERING in a corner, vomiting blood, mum-of-two Rachel Whitehouse turned to her boyfriend and sobbed: “Look what you’ve done.”
Paul Mcevoy – the man she’d once loved – had beaten her senseless.
It was Mother’s Day but Mcevoy couldn’t have cared less.
“That’s nothing yet,” he replied. He was filming his attack so he could replay the beating again and again.
“You’re going to prison,” Rachel cried. “Yeah?” mocked Mcevoy.
But t he video l ed t o him being jailed for two and a half years after he sent it to a friend of Rachel’s.
The pal passed it on to Rachel’s mum, who gave it to police.
But Rachel, 34, whose sons are from a previous relationship, says Mcevoy, 38, had so much power over her she would not testify against him.
She claims he continued to torment her from jail. She moved to a secret address but fears he could hurt other women when freed next summer.
She wants the Sunday People to show the video to help persuade other abuse victims to speak out.
“You can hear my screams, see him smashing up the house and hear me begging him to stop,” she says.
Charming
“I’d never forgive myself if a woman is killed because I didn’t speak out.”
She says the attack began when he returned from a drinking bender.
“I told him to leave,” she recalled. “He was going to go to his mum’s in Blackpool and I called her to warn her of the state he was in.
“He punched me in the face while I was talking to her. He went crazy, smashing up the house and hitting me.
“He threw the telly at my head. I saw stars and nearly passed out.
“He put a knife in my hand and kept saying ‘don’t stab me’ but I dropped it straight away. I think he was trying to make up an excuse for himself.
“He phoned the police and said, ‘I think I’ve killed her’ and went off to Blackpool drinking.
“When police arrived I refused to press charges. I thought I loved him, that it must have been my fault.”
Ex- DJ Mcevoy was jailed at Birmingham crown court in June for assault and breaching his licence after a racially aggravated assault on a police officer months earlier. Despite being behind bars his abuse continued, Rachel says.
“One day he called me 73 times.
“I got regular texts saying people were watching the house.
“He wrote to my university to try to get me kicked out, saying I was distributing drugs and holding weapons.
“He also shared lots of intimate photos of me on social media.”
The monster was a far cry from the “charming” guy Rachel had initially dated as a 17-year-old.
They lost touch before reuniting after meeting outside a Birmingham nightclub in 2016.
She says the first six months were great. “He was always buying me gifts and we went out for dinner,” she recalled.
But Mcevoy became increasingly possessive.
“He’d disappear for days and say he was leaving me,” she said.
“But he had so much control over me at that stage that I would beg him to stay.”
She alleges
he pushed her head under bathwater and said, ‘You’re lucky I don’t drown you.’
She claims he bugged her house and put bars on the windows, then smashed her phone and gave her a new one with a tracking device.
“He put CCTV all over the house so that he could monitor who was coming in and out,” she said
“He logged into my Facebook and wrote, ‘I’m a whore, my dad’s not my dad and my uncle raped my mum.’”
Two weeks before the attack that got him jailed, Rachel said: “He almost killed me when he crashed the car we were in. It broke my ribs. Then he assaulted a police officer at the scene.”
Rachel alleges that a few weeks before that he stood over her bed at night wearing rubber gloves and held a meat cleaver over her neck.
She is studying to be an advocate for domestic violence victims.
And this Christmas she’s hoping the horror is behind her.
Rachel said: “This Christmas feels special, we can actually celebrate it.”
If you or anyone you know is affected by domestic abuse go to www.victimsupport.co.uk