Abi begged Michael Carr to think of her family as he squeezed his arms tighter around her throat.
The room grew darker as she desperately gasped for breath. Through her blurred vision, she reached forward and pulled at the sentimental gold chain around his neck.
She felt the cold metal snap in her bloodied hand and Michael recoiled in shock. Momentarily free from his grip, Abi pushed herself off the floor and ran towards the door.
“I thought he was going to kill me,” the 24-year-old told the Manchester Evening News . “I was literally begging for my life. I ran to my car and cried my eyes out. I just wanted my mum.”
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The violent attack had gone on for hours. It started when the couple got kicked out of a nightclub in Bury in the early hours of December 19, 2021. Abi, not her real name, remembered Michael becoming heavily intoxicated, ignoring her pleas to stop drinking.
Outside in the cold, he pushed her. Abi didn’t register the unprovoked assault until she saw her glasses shattered on the floor. Despite the random act of violence, she allowed him back to her flat in Hyde – unaware of the horrors that were about to unfold behind closed doors.
“When we got home, he locked me out of my flat,” Abi said. “As soon as I got back in, it was a nightmare.
“He battered me; my face was all black and blue. I was bleeding from my ears and my eyes – he strangled me to the point where I wet myself and nearly passed out. It was like he was possessed. I was screaming for help and banging on the floor because I have a neighbour.
“I just kept trying to go in different rooms to get away from him. I ran into the bathroom because it had a lock but there was a towel over the door which stopped me from shutting the door. I just remember asking him, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’”
It was three agonising hours before Abi managed to escape her own home. From the safety of her locked car, she watched as 27-year-old Michael paced up and down by the vehicle.
He repeatedly punched the passenger window before reaching into his pocket and taking out his phone. Thinking she was going to drive away, Michael called the police to try and get her arrested for drink driving. He then calmly returned to the property.
“I had no phone and I knew I couldn’t drive,” Abi continued. “It was absolutely freezing; I had no shoes or socks on.”
After around half an hour, Abi walked back into her home. It was around 4am and Michael had gone to bed. Bruised and bloodied, she curled up on the sofa and went to sleep.
Four hours later, the couple were woken by a knock on the door. It was the police responding to Michael’s call from earlier that morning.
The officers took one look at Abi and knew they were dealing with a domestic incident. “They pulled me outside the flat straight away and arrested him,” she added. “They took him to the police station.”
Michael Carr was later charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and assault by beating. He was sentenced to 34 months in jail following a hearing at Manchester Crown Court on October 31.
He was also handed a restraining order for 10 years and ordered to pay a victim surcharge fee. Due to having a curfew for 314 days following the incident, he will have this time taken off his sentence.
But despite his punishment, Abi still lives with the physical and mental scars she suffered that day. “I’m still waiting for therapy,” she added. “I got diagnosed with PTSD and severe anxiety a few months ago. I’ve been on anxiety medication since it happened.
“I have flashbacks and I still live in the same flat where it happened. Because most of it happened in the living room, I had to redecorate it to make it look different.
“For the first six months, I couldn’t even go in there without having flashbacks and panic attacks. I break down. I honestly thought he was going to kill me, that’s the only way I can describe it. I thought no one was going to help me and no one was going to find my body – that's what was going through my mind.”
Abi met Michael while they were both studying at the same college and had been together for two-and-a-half-years. Though she alleges that he had previously shown signs of controlling behaviour, Abi says he had never been this violent towards her before.
“I’ve known him since I was 16,” she continued. “I thought I knew him; I didn’t think he was a violent person.
“He’s spat in my face during arguments before and pushed me back onto the bed. But this was completely unprovoked – I have no idea why he did it and I still can’t wrap my head around it.
“When you love someone, you don’t believe something like this would happen. It was like he was a different person.”
Abi was rushed to hospital following the assault due to blood pouring from her ear. She suffered a perforated ear drum and was covered head to toe in bruises. To this day, she still has tissue damage underneath her eyes – a permanent reminder of the nightmare she endured.
“My face was a complete mess,” she added. “The whites of my eyeballs were completely filled with blood. They were like that for three weeks.
“Both of my eyes were black and my knees were covered in bruises and friction burns from the carpet when I was trying to get myself up. You can see the tissue damage under my eyes; I wear glasses still but you can see it as soon as I take them off.”
But Abi can now breathe a sigh of relief knowing her abuser is behind bars. “I definitely feel like a weight has been lifted,” she said.
“I’ve been working two jobs to keep myself busy and keep my mind off it. But the day after his sentencing, I woke up and I felt a lot lighter than I did before.”
For information and support on domestic abuse, visit the Women's Aid charity website by clicking the link here.
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