Connie Falzon scrolls through a series of photos in her mobile phone and looks at images of herself with a black eye and with cuts and bruises all over her body.

“I used to try and hide my bruises and not show people what I was going through. I always had a smile on my face so no one would notice I was unhappy. There’s no more hiding now,” Ms Falzon says.

After enduring 10 years of abuse from her partner, with whom she has two children, she decided to seek help and speak up about the experience.

“I want to try to encourage women out there who are being abused to find the courage to seek help. There is help out there. No woman deserves to be abused; for whatever reason,” she says.

She adds that the authorities, especially the police, had to be better trained to handle domestic violence reports.

“Ideally, they need to be able to look into the eyes of a woman, who is standing near her abuser, and read her pain. Once, after I filed a police report, I was spoken to at the police station with my partner in the room. They need to be more sensitive,” she said.

Last Monday a group of people held a silent demonstration in Valletta where they urged authorities to take immediate action to protect victims of domestic violence.

The issue was highlighted by the tragic case of 40-year-old Christina Sammut who was shot four weeks after she filed a report at the Rabat police station claiming her former partner had chased her with a knife. Soon after the shooting, on December 11, her ex-boyfriend, Kenneth Gafà turned himself in to the police.

When the demonstration was on the news a friend of Ms Falzon, who had also been abused, phoned her to tell her to switch on the television.

“We were both glad to see the demonstration... Hopefully, the message will get through,” Ms Falzon says, as she leafs through copies of police reports she filed over the past year.

Ms Falzon recounts how soon after she met her partner in 1999 he forced her to leave her three jobs because he was jealous. After about a year she got pregnant with their daughter and soon after she gave birth the abuse escalated.

Her partner, a Libyan man, started drinking about a bottle of wine a day. The more he drank, the more violent he became.

“When the clock struck 5 p.m. I’d start getting scared as he was coming back home from work... If I did not put enough salt in the food the plate would come flying.

“When I mentioned leaving him he threatened to disfigure my face so no one else would want to be with me. He would say, ‘I decide when you die’,” she says in a surprisingly calm tone.

Then she explains: “The more I speak about it, the better I feel and the less hard it is... That is why I am encouraging women to speak up.”

She recalls how her partner had slammed her against a wall, belly first, when she was pregnant with their second child. She later learnt she was meant to have twins but had lost one.

Meanwhile, she realised he had been married and his former wife had managed to get an annulment as he was abusive.

As the abuse escalated, she filed her first police report in 2009 but police said they could not do much without evidence. After she filed the report, she got an even bigger beating as he was angry at her for reporting him.

Sometime later, after an argument, he dragged her from her hair with so much force that she bled from the scalp. He also punched her in the face and beat her with their son’s toy car.

That day, after a neighbour called the police, officers knocked at their door and arrested him. After spending a few days in hospital, she returned to him, but not for long as this time she had had enough.

The final straw came when he threatened to take the children, who feared their father, to Libya. She took her children to a shelter where they lived for four months.

Meanwhile, he was jailed for a month for the beating incident.

“I loved him. During the court case he asked me to forgive him. It’s not that I wanted to see him in prison but I had to do something to show I was taking a stand.”

Since then she has not been in contact with her partner and is raising her children alone without any help from him. All she wants is to live a peaceful life, void of fear, with her two children.

A recent study on the prevalence of domestic violence in Malta showed that a quarter of women have been physically, emotionally or sexually abused by their husband or partner.

Emotional abuse emerged as the most prevalent followed by physical and sexual abuse. Over 60 per cent of battered women suffered severe violence that included being kicked, punched, dragged or threatened with a gun. Three per cent were beaten by their partner while pregnant and carrying his child, with some suffering a miscarriage or still birth. More than half of the abused women never sought help. Of those who did, about a quarter went to the police.