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Content warning: This article discusses domestic violence.
In a new interview with the Daily Telegraph, media personality and Sunday Telegraph columnist Erin Molan has spoken candidly about her harrowing experience with domestic violence.
And it's not a story she ever hoped she'd tell.
"I’m not sharing my story because I want to," Molan said. "My preference would be for this part of my life to never be shared, but with every single death I see in this space a part of me wonders whether I could have made a difference."
To the public, Molan seemed confident and accomplished. Behind closed doors, she was living in terror.
"When you ask me about the worst time, there are just so many times," she said. Molan recounted separate incidents during which she said a former partner "smashed a bottle over [her] head", she "was terrified he'd throw [her] off a balcony", and when he "covered [her] face with a pillow so [she] couldn't breathe".
"I was crying for my mum," she said. "I really thought he would kill me."
Molan was so entrenched in the relationship, she said, that she would lie to protect her former partner, even when "the police would turn up" or she'd "end up in hospital".
"I remember so many instances where I wanted the police to take the element of choice away from me because I could never say anything that would hurt him," she said.
While she was "begging inside [her] head" for help, she couldn't bring herself to speak up.