She was 18 years old and in love. She met him through friends. She was also pregnant when her boyfriend intentionally drove a car into her.

Terry, not her actual name, lost the baby and was in hospital for a week.

Her mother pulled her away from the abuse and now Terry, a mother herself, is telling her story to help others recognise signs of domestic violence in their relationships.

"The verbal abuse started almost immediately. It started with the verbal stuff and the emotional stuff with my daughter [from a previous relationship]. If I wouldn't have sex with him he would say. 'I'm going to beat her'. So I complied.

"The physical abuse started within three to four months of the relationship. I had isolated my family. I didn't want them to see I have that coping mechanism; I just deal with it personally. But that meant more harm than good as a result."

On the night she ended up in hospital Terry had been at a party with her boyfriend, Paul.

Paul, not his real name, saw her speaking to another man and assumed she was cheating on him.

In the parking lot he would not let Terry into the car. She moved to the front of the car trying to convince Paul to let her in and to stop him from driving away.

Paul put the car in first gear and drove anyway. He delivered Terry to the hospital claiming he found her on the road and didn't know her name. Terry's baby with her abuser was never born.

She spent 24 hours in the hospital hemorrhaging and recovering from the loss of her baby. Within a week her mother had packed Terry's apartment and moved her into her home. Paul continued to contact Terry, sending her flowers and calling her at work.

Terry courageously took him to court and he was given a suspended sentence. On his way out of the court he threatened to kill Terry.

She said: "It's amazing that your assailant can threaten you so much that nothing matters. You are coasting through life. This is the way of life.

"He never regretted what he did. For a very long time [after this] I became a hermit I went to work and then home. It was a coping mechanism. I was 20 when it stopped. He found another person to antagonise."

Despite that, Terry struggled to overcome the abuse she had suffered. She entered a second relationship which was not physically abusive, but her partner abused her verbally and emotionally. She had a son with him, but he had five other women.

He expected her to be one of them serving him dinner and being at his beck and call.

"The relationship was so brief and to magnify so quickly I thought, 'what did I do?' It must be something I did to be in this position.

"I was about 25 when I woke up one day and thought, 'I don't want this type of man in my life and I need to stop this chain.'"

She went to the Women's Resource Centre [see contact information in story above] for help and two years later she had worked through her concerns with the help of her counsellor.

Terry has been happily married for seven years and hopes telling her story will alert other women to signs of abuse in their own relationships.