The risk posed to women by ex-partners in cases of abuse is underestimated by large swathes of the British public, according to the charity Refuge.

Data from the charity’s helpline found that 42% of people who call Refuge for help identify a former partner as their abuser, a statistic which underlines how common it is for an ex to be a cause of harm after a relationship has ended.

Despite this, a survey of the wider national population found that many UK adults did not name a former partner as a probable culprit in ongoing abuse.

YouGov data commissioned by Refuge found that, while 71% of UK adults identified that a woman is most likely to be abused by somebody she knows, of this percentage, only 12% recognised an ex-partner as the most likely to be the abuser, while 78% identified a current partner.

Sasha* said she has experienced stalking and harassment since separating from her partner and father of her child in 2012. Despite not living together when the relationship ended, Sasha’s ex-partner would “still show up unannounced, demand to be let in and insist on seeing my son, especially on specific occasions like holidays”.

Coercive and controlling behaviour became an offence in England and Wales in 2015. Post-separation abuse – coercive and controlling behaviour by a former partner after the relationship has ended – was criminalised through the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and came into force in April 2023.

Sasha said the stalking continued even after she moved house. At Christmas, she sent photos of her son to her ex-partner at his request. He then used the metadata from the photos to geolocate her street and track down her home.

He also followed her to family events and community gatherings she was attending with her son, such as the Notting Hill carnival.

“He’s white British, and I’m of Jamaican heritage, so going to carnival with my family was a big deal – it’s a way of celebrating who I am and making sure my son connects with his heritage,” Sasha said. “For him to weaponise those events was incredibly difficult and eventually made me stop going.”

For Sasha, the “breaking point” came when her ex-partner began making threats of suicide and saying it would be her fault. When she went to his house to check on him, she said, “he was laughing – he thought it was funny that I believed he would actually hurt himself”.

Charlotte Eastop, the senior operations manager at Refuge, said a “huge proportion” of calls came from victims of post-separation abuse. “It’s extremely prevalent and I don’t think it’s recognised [to be] as much of an issue as it actually is.”

While not all cases of post-separation abuse involved children, Eastop said abusers could often weaponise children to “continue that control and abuse” of their victims, by demanding to see the children, or alienating the victim by blaming or insulting her to the children.

Family courts could be used as another method of control, added Eastop. Abusers might “constantly and subtly bend” court-ordered agreements by not picking up children at agreed times or not confirming their schedule, meaning a victim could not plan their social life around parenting.

Eastop added that post-separation abuse was often dismissed, since the victim was not in a relationship with their abuser. “Police might respond and say: ‘Look, he just wants to see the kids’, not recognising the threat there. Even, unfortunately, with some domestic abuse agencies, she might be labelled as a ‘historical survivor’ where the threat is not there right now, but actually it is and it’s continuing.

“The sense of hopelessness is overwhelming in that situation because you’ve done all you can and it still continues,” she added.

While post-separation abuse is a criminal offence, Eastop said more mandatory training and awareness was needed for police and judiciary members to help them respond adequately to cases of controlling behaviour by former partners.

“Legislation takes time to really embed,” Eastop said. “Separation is a really dangerous time in terms of escalation risk. It’s about the police understanding the risk and ongoing impacts.”

* Not her real name