The shocking truth of domestic violence

The chilling and new one-off drama for BBC Three could bring a lot of attention from both media and the public. A story of how one innocent girl’s world gets torn apart when she falls for a monster. The horrifying programme tells us the true story of one victim’s story of domestic violence against women. The names in the programme changed for legal reasons.

Sweet innocent seventeen year-old Ashley (Georgina Campbell) is living the normal life of a British teenager, when she meets her Mr Right Reece (Royce Pierreson), who she falls quickly head over heels in love with. They begin a relationship which is like something from a fairytale. The whole “honeymoon” period for the love ones is just perfect. Going out on dates, going clubbing with their friends, driving about having fun. Every girl’s dream. Right? Three months later and Ashley discovers she’s about to have Reece’s baby and he plays the charming hero who promises her that he is going to stand by her no matter what. He wants the perfect family and the perfect future. Although her mother disagrees, she refuses to listen and ends up moving in with Reece.

Six months later and the strain of the pregnancy is getting to the both of them. The young girl’s dream starts to fall apart as Reece’s violence’s begins. Ashley keeps asking Reece what they are going to do with their future. And as she keeps on asking, he switches into a monster and violently smashes her head against the wall. Running out of the house she stops and runs back to him. Which is where it all starts.

Three years later with their daughter doing her drawings, the audience can quickly see the control Reece has on Ashley. Ordering her to tell him where she’s been. Ordering her to change her clothes before going out clubbing. As the violence carries on, he wants to know everything that she’s doing or who she’s seeing. However, we also discover that Reece is cheating on Ashley behind her back but yet still has full control over her. Her friend, Sabrina discovers the bruises on Ashley’s body and begs her to leave him, but she tells her that it isn’t that easy to do. Later that night, Ashley discovers his cheating ways but he soon worms his way out of it. It gets worse as he even goes into her work place and attacks her in front of people all because she goes and sees his mistress’s house.

Three years and eight months later we see Ashley trying to get on with her normal life without Reece, as she has a one night stand with a guy who likes her, he discovers that he can’t be with her due to Reece’s consent ringing and stalking. Sadly feeling like nothing, he is back in her life again and they get engaged. Ashley knows her gut feeling is telling her no, but all for a quiet life she thinks there isn’t any hope for herself. Towards the end she screams that she had a one night stand with someone in London which leaded her to be killed by Reece’s hands and murder weapon which was an ironing board. Ashley was left dying in her room for two hours before the ambulance came to her rescue. Sadly she died in hospital that day.

As much as the drama was a masterpiece, I also felt sick and heartbroken by Ashley’s story. Everytime she got abused, I would flinch because I thought I would feel her pain. That’s how great the one-off drama was! The writer, the director, the producers, basically every single person who was involved in this project clearly did their research on domestic violence and sadly to say, this story was based on real events and it is happening right now. Me typing this review up, it could be happening right now. You reading this review, it could be happening right now. And that where it’s scary because all I wanted to do was to grab Ashley from the screen and save her from this hell. I think it’ll be wrong for me to say I enjoyed because in a way I didn’t. However, the strong storyline and the effort that was put in it was so professional and Georgina Campbell and Royce Pierreson, who played Ashley and Reece, both worked their socks off to perform such difficult roles in the programme. Murdered By My Boyfriend will be discussed a lot by everyone for a very long while because of the heartbreaking topic which the viewers watched.

A big well done to everyone on the show for contributing in such a tough and chilling project that effects a hell of a lot people in this day and age!