"Alex's partner was the first woman jailed for coercive and controlling behaviour in the UK. Now he's trying to fight the stigma around male domestic abuse."

BBC reports. Excerpt:

She started to deny me food, which meant I lost a lot of weight. I’d try and challenge her behaviour, but she’d turn it on me and find a way to make me the problem. I’d know it wasn’t my fault, but she’d keep convincing me. You end up thinking, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ Then you do something differently and they moan at you for being different. When she was telling me, "I don’t like the colour grey," or "I don’t like those shoes," I’d think, "Okay, I won’t wear them," because I wanted to impress her. But, in reality, she was moulding me into who she wanted me to be. It undermines your confidence. And you’re fighting a battle that you’ll never win. It’s so frustrating....

It took 18 months for the mental abuse to turn physical. It began when she started sleeping with a glass bottle next to her.... [S]he’d wait until I’d fallen asleep and smack me on the head with the bottle. She’d demand, "What are you thinking about?"...After the bottle, it was a hammer....

I could feel my body shutting down. I’d lost five stone in weight. Afterwards, doctors told me that I’d been 10 days from death because I’d been denied food for so long and my injuries were so bad. It all came to an end in 2018, when a police officer came round to the house to follow up their previous visit and questioned me.... My injuries were so severe by that point, and I was so gaunt after all the weight loss. I’d denied everything up until that point....