"I thought I wouldn't make it out alive." It's not a random phrase. Nor is it a metaphor. It's a precise snapshot of a moment: the moment when Anna (not her real name), silently counted the seconds with a knife held to her throat. On another occasion, it was an electrical cord wrapped around her neck. A hammer, then, resting on the table, as if keeping it there was enough to remind her who was in charge.
Her story with the man she thought would be the love of her life began like so many others: measured kindness, meticulously measured attention, that thoughtfulness that lowers your defenses.
"At first, he seemed like the man everyone would want by their side," she says. "Polite, thoughtful, helpful. The perfect person." But that was only the first act. The second came quietly. Insults whispered in the street, then shouted at home. Spitting. Punches thrown at them. Words used as weapons.
Day after day, Anna's freedom shrank, like a dress that no longer fits: too tight, too suffocating.
"I've always been independent. One day I realized I couldn't even decide what time to leave the house anymore. I couldn't see my friends, I couldn't call my parents. He controlled everything."
But then her body, too, began to reveal what she couldn't yet say. Two visits to the emergency room, in May 2024: five days of treatment in the first, seven in the second. But the numbers are the minimum. The true, deeper signs were elsewhere: in her voice, which had begun to tremble, in her constant fear of falling asleep, but also of waking up, and in that daily habit of pain.
What saved her, she says, was a combination of courage and awareness. A lawyer who didn't just follow the case, but listened to her. And then her mother, who understood everything from a bruise. But also the police, who never looked away. "If I'm alive today, I owe it to them too," she repeats. Now Anna is trying to put back together everything that was destroyed.
"I lost my job, I lost confidence, I lost time. But now I have something I no longer had: the ability to choose. I'm studying, I'm looking for a new job. Above all, I feel alive again."
She shares her story because she wants "my experience to be useful to someone who is where I was today. Who feels alone, disoriented, unable to imagine a way out. Violence isn't always loud. Sometimes it's silent, disguised as everyday life. But if you feel your dignity slipping away, stop. Ask for help. Don't wait until it's too late. We weren't born to be tolerated, but to be respected."
In the summary trial, her ex-partner was sentenced to three years and four months in prison. The sentence was reduced due to the defendant's trial, but the two-year probation, restraining order, and five-year ban from holding public office were also upheld. The sentence also required the payment of a provisional fine of €5,000, immediately enforceable, as an advance on the larger sums that will later be assessed in the civil proceedings.
