Domestic violence affects one in four women, but you don't need to carry physical scars for abuse to have occurred. Women's Editor Lindsay Jennings speaks to one South African victim who endured years of mental abuse beore forging a new life for herself.

ANA Cristina* looked down at her new baby daughter, her eyes brimming with tears at the world she was bringing her into. In the hospital room next door, she could hear a new mum laughing with delight as she ripped the wrapping paper from yet another gift. The woman had had a constant flow of visitors all day and her room was filled with flowers, balloons and cards of congratulations.

In Ana Cristina's room, there was a solitary bunch of flowers from the only person who had been to see her, her husband, Peter. She had hoped that when he saw his daughter, he would have been overcome with love and pride as she had. But instead, there was only the cold indifference he had shown to his wife for the past two or three years.

"He never showed any compassion to me - he was so cold, really cold. That is one of the things I remember," she recalls. "I think the mental abuse is as bad as the physical, because the physical you can show everybody and it is evidence. Everybody can see your bruises and say 'poor you'. But if it is mental, it is hard, because you need to make people understand."

Sitting in her council home in Middlesbrough, tears fill her eyes as she recalls how guilty she still feels because she picked the wrong person.

Ana Cristina, 33, was born into a poor family in South Africa. At 15, she got her first job doing office work for a Western company in Cape Town and became the first person in her family to go to college, where she studied business administration.

From her humble beginnings, she went on to become the success of her family. By the time she reached 29, she had managed to save enough money to buy her own flat and car.

She met her future husband, who was from the North-East of England, while he was on holiday in Cape Town. "I always dreamed of marrying a European. I always thought they would be...I don't know...that they would treat women with more respect and wouldn't betray me," she says. "I think a lot of people in poor countries think people who live in rich countries are rich - because they have free healthcare and education and something more. Maybe it's a cultural thing."

Peter lied from the moment he met Ana Cristina, telling her he was a fireman when he was in fact a security guard. She discovered his real job only after moving to England to live with him. By that time she was in love.

When her visa ran out, the couple returned to South Africa where Ana Cristina found Peter work as a porter in an hotel. Although he had selfish traits, she initially found him to be kind, and her family and friends took to him well. But she soon discovered a controlling side to his nature.

It began when they moved to a flat in a better area, which was more expensive than where they lived. Peter had arrived in South Africa with enough money to buy himself a car. He expected Ana Cristina to sell her car in order to help fund the new flat.

"I used to have a savings account but he would want to eat at restaurants and go out and soon the money went," she says quietly. "He had just brought enough money to buy his car and I started to use credit cards and got into debt."

After four years together, the couple married in South Africa and decided to move back to England. But Peter insisted that Ana Cristina sell her flat first. It was a possession she was reluctant to let go of, a sign of her independence and something which had taken years to afford. Grudgingly, she handed over the proceeds of the sale to her husband and he went on to buy a one bedroom house in Teesside, putting the deeds in his own name. In addition to his controlling nature came increasingly volatile outbursts.

'He used to have terrible moods when he didn't get his own way," she says. "I would keep quiet and ignore him, but he would suddenly start shouting things at me like 'Third World trash' and 'tramp' because I didn't work. I felt like I had lost everything because I had no money. He wouldn't even let me help choose the furniture he bought.

"When I say he shouted at me, people say 'Why didn't you shout back?', but it wasn't like that. I felt like I was dead. He made me weak, so that I had no self-esteem, and you can't work, or have friends, or look after yourself if you have no self-esteem. I had no-one."

After a few months in the new house, Ana Cristina discovered she was pregnant with Ellie. But there was no respite from the mental abuse.

In the village where she lived, there was no community centre, pub or corner shop, just rows and rows of houses. Cut off from any support, and without knowing anyone in the country, she began to despair, feeling like a prisoner inside her home. When she went into labour, Peter was away visiting friends. Ana Cristina went to the hospital alone, only for her husband to turn up the following morning when she was still in labour.

"He said he had no money, and while I was in pain he kept shouting 'give me your bank cards' because he knew I had £200 that I had to buy baby clothes with," she says. "I didn't have any money. I didn't even have an overnight bag. I had worked my whole life and I went to the hospital with two Asda carrier bags. It was so humiliating.

"But he started to call me selfish and materialistic. In the end I gave him the cards because I was in so much pain. When I left hospital, I went to buy some things for Ellie and I found I had nothing left."

Ana Cristina finally found the courage to leave after reading about a local refuge service in her doctor's surgery. She stayed in the refuge for a few weeks until she was placed in council accommodation with three-year-old Ellie, eight months ago. In her home there are piles of paper - a result of endless form-filling she says. The rooms are sparsely furnished because Peter refused to let her take anything from the house.

"I even had to sleep on the floor for two months," she smiles wryly.

But she is planning to decorate and is revelling in making choices again, simple things like choosing the colour of her curtains.

Jumping up, Ana Cristina leaves the room and returns with a photo album full of happy snaps which she looks through. In every picture, she is smiling, her huge brown eyes shining with innocence. Today, her smile is still evident, but it is a wary smile and behind her eyes lies a cautious determination.

Ellie is happily munching on a biscuit while watching Teletubbies. Her mum scoops her up and gives her a protective cuddle.

"If it is physical, you can heal the outside, but nobody can take this feeling out of me, the bruise inside," she says, hugging Ellie.

"I want people to know that the psychological abuse, the low self-esteem are just as bad."

Her husband still lives in the house they shared and she is unsure whether she will see any of her money again. But she wants to tell her story so other women know that they can leave, even if they find themselves alone in a foreign country. She hopes to get work soon, to earn enough money to return to South Africa.

"I'm okay now," she says determinedly. "I feel my life is getting back on track and that is good."

* Names have been changed

LOCAL CONTACTS:

* Family Help Darlington and District Women's Refuge (01325) 364486

* East Durham Domestic Violence Forum, 24 hours emergency helpline 0191-586 3055

* Number 31 and Soda (Survivors of Domestic Abuse) is a domestic violence outreach service providing emotional and practical support (01325) 317903.