‘I called the police 169 times during my eight years of abuse hell’

When Katy Longhurst jumped in the car late one evening to pick her boyfriend Jack* up from a club, she had no idea of how quickly the night would unravel. 

At the venue, she struggled to find her other half so approached a male bouncer to describe what he looked like. Jack then appeared and charged towards her.

‘Jack saw me talking to another man,’ Katy tells Metro over Zoom. ‘He flipped out, said I was having an affair and head-butted me three times. My face was completely busted. I had a broken tooth, busted lip and two black eyes. The police showed me the CCTV so I could see Jack’s expression before he attacked me. But I refused to press charges. I told myself, “I spoke to another man. This was my fault.”’

Katy couldn’t admit the truth about the 2013 attack because she was trapped in an abusive relationship. When they had first met three years earlier, Jack was ‘a charmer’ who took a keen interest in her IT engineer job.

But after a few months, Katy saw his true colours. Jack would control where she went and who she spoke to and would physically attack her if she put a toe out of line. At work, Katy used a scarf to cover strangulation marks on her neck and said bruises on her face had been caused by ‘bumping into things.’

‘Jack made me feel fat, ugly and worthless,’ Katy recalls. ‘He said I was lucky to have someone like him. I became a social recluse because I thought if I stayed indoors where he could monitor everything, then I could minimise the damage. My next door neighbour used to call 999 when he heard him shouting. But when police came round, Jack would make me lie and say he wasn’t in. He would then go down and hide in the basement and listen to my conversations.

‘At times, I was paranoid that he could read my mind.’

Katy ended the relationship after she became pregnant in 2014 – terrified of the future her son might have. But the trauma didn’t stop there. Jack would follow her, send hurtful messages to her friends and even contact her colleagues to say she’d accused them of rape.

She continues: ‘He would break into my house when I was out and move things around, or leave a Welsh magnet [Jack was from Wales] on the fridge so I knew he’d been there. When that didn’t work, he’d moved onto harassment. There was a day I was due to start a new job at the NHS, but I couldn’t make it because he slashed my tyres.’

By 2015, Katy had given birth and begun a relationship with an old friend who had seen first-hand how Jack’s behaviour had impacted her. When her new partner was posted to Northern Ireland due to his work in the military, anti-stalking charity Paladin moved Katy to a women’s refuge near the army base so she felt safe from Jack. But when she later returned to England, her ex again sent abusive messages and made threats to her and her friends.

Katy called the police who, until this point, had ‘brushed off’ her concerns. But this time was different. Detective Constable Oliver Tween had been assigned her case and was determined to help her.

‘Before Oliver, I had lost faith in the police,’ Katy admits. ‘They acted like I was harassing them. One officer told me; “your life is like a psychedelic thriller, you’ll be a Netflix series one day.” and I remember being so shocked at him taking the mick when I was in such a terrifying situation.

‘But when Oliver was assigned my case, everything changed. He walked in the room and said “I believe you.” That made me burst into tears. He had a whole table of paper and had printed out the 169 police reports I’d made. He had mapped them all into categories like stalking, harassment, criminal damage, and assault.’

Oliver diligently helped Katy build a case against Jack. 

Speaking to Metro, he says ‘Meeting Katy was pure chance. At the station, we were given jobs on a rota basis. Jack had been making threatening messages toward Katy and making multiple pseudonyms to contact her and her friends.

‘This was causing a lot of distress. Initially, we looked at the case from a harassment and stalking point of view. At the time, I remember Katy had lost hope in the police and the system. Initially, she didn’t tell me how bad the experience with him had been because she was at her wit’s end. I wanted to get her back on side and prove I wanted to help.

‘Victim engagement was always really important to me, it was my initial drive to become a detective,’ he adds.’ There was a poster in the police station which really resonated with me, it said “this may be the 1000th time you’ve dealt with an incident, but it’s the victim’s first time reporting one.”’

Oliver seized Jack’s router – which proved threatening messages had been sent from his address – and analysed his phone to prove he had been to Katy’s home on the dates she had reported threatening behaviour. Police built up enough evidence to see Jack arrested and brought to court on a harassment charge. But, justice was never served.

‘The court found he was unfit to stand trial due to mental health reasons,’ Oliver explains. ‘For me it was always like that door hadn’t been closed.’

Jack has since moved hundreds of miles away from England and started a new family. While the bruises may have faded for Katy, the mental scars remain.

Now 38 and her son 10-years-old, she says: ‘You live with domestic abuse forever. You have to re-educate yourself on what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Adapting to a new world can be so hard, there have been times where a knock on the door will make me scared. 

‘Sometimes I feel disappointed that I let myself stay in that situation [with Jack] so long. But it’s so easy for people to say “why didn’t you just leave” when I was trying to protect myself and my friends. 

‘Looking back now I think, “how did I survive? How did I keep my small human alive and give him a good upbringing throughout it all?” I’ve come a long bloody way but I’m not the person I used to be. Before Jack, I was an outgoing, bubbly person who was the life and soul of the party. That old version of Katy is dead. Now, I’m so self-critical and no longer that person that would talk to anyone at a party, I’d be the one in the corner hiding by the bags and coats.

‘But I know if I had the strength to survive, then I have the strength to tell my story. I hope by telling it I can help other people.’

Katy, who now works as a Chief Produce Officer, has shared her experience ahead of the launch of her new app ‘Ask Joan’, which can identify certain surges in power within the home – such as a kettle or hair straighteners – to alert designated individuals or support teams of a need for assistance. The team behind the technology is keen not to give away exactly how it works, so perpetrators don’t recognise it. 

‘During the darkest periods of my life, I often wished that calling for help was as simple as making a cup of tea,’ explains Katy. ‘It never happened for me that way, so having spent years healing myself, I decided to put my experience in tech to good use and develop a system that did just what I had wished for. 

‘For me, panic alarms were not just ineffective but fuelled an already volatile situation. Ask Joan is covert in its application and will not put the victim at further risk.’

Katy has even been joined by Oliver, who has since retired from the police, to sit on the Ask Joan board. When the pair reconnected last year, the former policeman said her case ‘kept him up at night’ because Jack had never been jailed.

Oliver, who was in Kent Police for 10 years and the Met for five, recently left the force on December 1 to pursue a new job. He also welcomed a daughter into his life, which gave him further drive when Katy got in touch for the first time in years to tell him about Ask Joan. 

He adds: ‘I felt I’d carried a lot of baggage over the years, I worried I hadn’t done enough for Katy, but then she reached out to me at the beginning of the year and expressed how much I had helped. It was amazing to hear from her. 

‘With domestic abuse cases, a lot of people really don’t want panic alarms in case the perpetrator finds it and their situation escalates. For Katy to come up with something like Ask Joan, it’s pretty incredible. And for me, I’ve seen the hardship Katy went through and to know my daughter could potentially be in a similar situation breaks my heart.’

Before May when she created Ask Joan, Katy had never openly admitted she was a victim of domestic abuse.

‘Creating Ask Joan was part of a healing process for me,’ she admits. ‘Jack had control for 13 years, but I won’t let him anymore. I know by doing this that I’m waving a red flag at a bull, but I can’t let him win. I want to prove Jack is no longer in control and that I’m my own person.

‘I hope to God I can help other women in the same situation as me and help them recognise signs of domestic abuse. Every situation is different, but I want people to know they’re not alone.’

When contacted by Metro about Katy’s experience, Detective Chief Inspector Ben Loose said Kent Police was ‘committed to ensuring all victims of domestic abuse receive the highest possible level of service.’

He added: ‘We have made significant improvements in our approach to tackling domestic abuse in recent years, including the creation of dedicated teams of officers who are specially trained in investigating such offences and supporting victims and witnesses.

‘The independent policing inspectorate recognised these improvements in its most recent report of the force published in November 2023, which also highlighted the introduction of our domestic abuse hub that makes use of rapid video technology to provide a quicker and more effective response for victims.

‘We will continue to listen to survivors and learn from their experiences in order to provide a consistently high level of service to those who rely on our support and expertise in their time of need.’

Ask Joan is currently undergoing assessments and due to be live in app stores on IOS and Google Play soon.

*Jack’s name has been changed.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kirsten.Robertson@metro.co.uk 

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