DORSET Police deal with an incident of domestic violence every hour of the day.

Officers receive on average 700 reports of domestic abuse per month across the county and have dealt with more than 36,000 incidents of domestic violence in the last five years.

Around one in four women and 38 per cent of men will become a victim of domestic abuse within their lifetime and across the UK, two women a week and one man every 17 days are killed by their current or former partner.

Today, one brave woman tells the story of the psychological and physical abuse inflicted upon her for almost 30 years.

PSYCHOLOGICAL abuse can leave mental scars that never heal.

Bullying, vicious name-calling, controlling and coercive behaviour and intimidation are just four examples of how a perpetrator of domestic abuse can hurt their victim without the need for violence.

Now one woman, who wanted to be known as Sam, has told how the psychological abuse inflicted on her by two ex-partners and her mother for the majority of her life led her to the brink.

Sam, 44, has three grown-up children and moved to Weymouth to escape the mental torment she faced from her mother and the father of her children.

She was put on medication by doctors to combat the depression and anxiety that followed her abuse, and said it held her back until she signed up to the Domestic Abuse Intervention Training (DAIT) courses.

She said: “It has happened my whole life.

“I was attacked mentally and physically.

“It was mainly mental abuse. I was told I was ‘thick’.

“I was told I was stupid, I was told I was the lowest of the low.

“It was my mother to start with, then my former husband, and then my children’s dad.

“I got into a cycle of abusive relationships because when you’ve been treated like that all your life you believe what you are told, “Because of the way I had been treated before I felt like it was my fault.

“I was ashamed of it.”

Sam said she was subjected to vicious name-calling in the relationships and would often go against her own principles to try and please her partners.

Her former partners would control her finances, would tell her what to wear, when she could leave the house and she lived under constant fear and intimi-dation.

She said: “It was mainly mental but it got physical sometimes.

“To somebody who hasn’t been through it, it sounds stupid, a lot of people will say ‘why didn’t you just walk away’ but it’s not that easy.

“Your boundaries get trampled all over to satisfy someone else’s needs and because you get pushed into a small space, you can’t control it.

“If you get pushed down the stairs, or punched in the face, you know that it is domestic violence straight away, but I think mental and psychological abuse is worse.

“It can make you feel so scared and in fear.

“It can make you feel worthless and insignificant, and it makes you feel like you are going crazy.”

After a separate harrowing incident at work, Sam enrolled on the Domestic Abuse Intervention (DAIT) Freedom programme, which she said had a ‘massive impact’ on her life and helped ‘get my life back’.

Sam said attending the course had ‘massive impact’ on her and helped her get her life back, and advised people who are victims of domestic abuse, whether it be physical or psychological, to seek help as quickly as possible from DAIT.

She added: “You have got the right to be happy and you also have the right to say no to people, to say that’s too far.

“Now I look back and realise I hadn’t done anything wrong, why should I be ashamed of it?

“A lot of people think it’s their fault and feel ashamed but what I would say to them is don’t be.

“It’s not your fault in any way but you get blamed and broken down mentally just to keep you in your place.”