The victim was not prepared to stay with her partner after the attack. Picture posed by model

The extra �700,000 grant from the Welsh Assembly Government will allow Welsh Women's Aid to offer support to those suffering abuse or others about someone they know.

One victim in south Wales, who does not want to be identified, told of her harrowing experience at the hands of her partner to the BBC Wales News website.

I'd been living with my partner for 15 years.

He had always been suspicious of me, always thinking I would go off with other men which just did not enter my mind.

But over the last three and a half years since our daughter was born things gradually got a lot worse.

He was always suspicious when I went out. He would interrogate me about where I had been, what I had been doing.

Then he started checking our mobile phone, so I became suspicious about him too. I thought, 'I know I'm not having an affair so maybe it's him and he's trying to hid something.'

I used to do the shopping on my own, then he insisted he come with me. It was so bad that when I asked him to go down one aisle of the supermarket for something, while I was down another, he wouldn't go.

Selfish

He even checked the mileage of the car when I went off to see girlfriends, I've found out since.

'One night about a year ago he got agitated when we had a row about his teenage son one night after we'd been to the pub with a friend.

He said I was selfish. I went to bed and left him downstairs with the friend because I could see the argument was not going to resolve itself.

Three hours later he came up and launched what the judge later said was a completely, unprovoked attack on me as I lay in bed.

He just flipped. A lot of it was due to alcohol and drugs - he has since been going to AA.

Survive

He came up and straddled me on the bed. He's a big man. He pulled me by the hair off the bed and then back on to it. He was trying to stab my eyes out.

It was worse than anything that I have seen on the films. I did not think I was going to survive. And I was trying to convince myself that it was not my fault.

From zilch to the scale it ( the violence) was on that night was so frightening.

I knew that if it was a question of it happening again I would not be here to say anything about it.

After three hours of this he fell asleep and I knew I had a couple of hours to get me and my daughter away from him so I packed as much as I could and went to a friend's.

When I went to the hospital with my injuries they did a pregnancy test and confirmed what I had suspected - that I was pregnant (their baby son is now four-and-a-half months)

It took the police 13 days to arrest my partner. He was charged with actual bodily harm and threats to kill.

Eventually he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in prison on each charge and in the end served two months.

I went to stay with family in England and eventually came back to a refuge in Wales. I can't speak highly enough of the kind of non-judgemental help I've had from people in Women's Aid here.

Now he's asked me if I would consider going to Relate and trying again.

If I went, and I don't know if I will, it would not be about looking at getting back together again. It would be to find out why and where we went wrong.