by Chinwe Okafor
Father of five held a knife to his girlfriend’s throat and raped her, while live streaming the abuse to a chat room on the internet.
Sean Johnstone, 43, punched his then girlfriend Samantha Miller, 35, so hard in the stomach when she was pregnant that their child was born brain damaged.
Miss Miller, who has waived her anonymity, said she was raped countless times by Johnstone, hit with heavy ornaments and callipers and often went without food when they lived in Hartlepool and County Durham.
She said her two year relationship with Miller, during which he threatened to kill both her and their child was like ‘spending two years in a horror film.’
He also threatened to kill her unless she performed a sex act on his dog.
Johnstone, of Hartlepool, was found guilty of 27 charges which included rape and violent attacks on Miss Miller and has been jailed for 17-and-a-half years.
The charges also included possessing hundreds of images of child pornography and extreme pornography featuring animals.
But the mother of one said she fears once he is released he will come and find her and her daughter.
‘It was like spending two years in a horror film,’ said Miss Miller.
‘I would wake up with him on top of me.
‘The laptop was on in front of me and he said people were watching, that it was connected to a seedy chat room.
‘I was pregnant at the time. He punched me in the stomach, then he raped me. I was too scared to go to sleep at night.’
Miss Miller endured the abuse for two years from 2006.
She added: ‘Many times I went without a meal. He stubbed out cigarettes on me.
‘He had knives and screwdrivers all over the house, he would hit me with heavy ornaments, throw buckets of wee over me.
‘I wasn’t allowed to go out, I was rarely allowed to hold my child. I got a hiding if I answered him back. He would say ‘I’m going to kill you and kill that baby’.
‘I can’t remember how many times I was raped by him. Every day, in the end, I was being abused. It was continuous, day and night. I was walking on egg shells, constantly.’
Miss Miller moved to the north east from Chelmsford, Essex in 2002 and met Johnstone four years later. But shortly after they got together he began to control her life, throwing out her make-up and telling her what clothes to wear.
He then began physically abusing her.
Their daughter was born with brain damage which doctors said was caused by a serious impact while in the womb.
The week before Christmas, 2008, she finally managed to escape after suffering two years of violent abuse.
She grabbed her six-month-old daughter, her changing bag and just £2, and managed to catch a bus to the local police station. Mother and child then spent the next 18 months sheltering in women’s refuges.
As well as brain damage her daughter was later diagnosed with neurological condition Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease, which she inherited from her father.
The case was at first hampered after police said there was not enough evidence to prosecute Johnstone, but two years later Johnstone’s second victim came forward and they corroborated each other’s stories.
He was convicted unanimously of every charge.
Judge Simon Bourne-Arton jailed Johnstone in 2012 and said he had a ‘deeply unhealthy interest in sexual depravity’.
Miss Miller, who lives in Washington with her six-year-old daughter, suffered post traumatic disorder because of the abuse and started self harming.
She added: ‘I still see him every night and every day, coming at me with a knife,’ she said.
‘Sometimes if something touches my head I feel him grabbing my hair. I have nightmares.
‘I believe he is the devil. He is not just a criminal. It was like he was possessed.’
She said the abuse also makes her paranoid, fearing when people say they recognise her that they have seen her being raped online.
She added: ‘My life has been taken. I may be alive but because of what’s happened, I’m not me any more. I want to stop that happening to other people – there is a way out.’
Miss Miller is planning to change her name and move out of the area with her daughter, before Johnstone, formerly of Hartlepool, is released from jail.
‘He is going to come for us and I know he is,’ she said.
‘He told me if I ever left him, he would find me and he would kill me. He still controls my life. My life, to this day, is controlled.’
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