A WOMAN has spoken of the terrifying moment she "felt like she was in a horror film" when her ex-husband slashed her across the neck with a butcher's knife.

Dorota Gondhia, 33, was lucky to escape with her life following the savage attack, but has decided to speak publicly about the assault in a bid to encourage other victims of domestic violence to inform the police.

She had been packing her bags in an upstairs room when the man she had just divorced calmly walked into the house, locked the doors behind him, moved all telephones out of reach and picked up the biggest knife in the kitchen.

He said to her: "You are going to die tonight" and slashed Mrs Gondhia across the face, leaving her scarred from chin to ear, before stabbing her in the neck just millimetres from her jugular vein.

"I just remember blood everywhere," she said.

Her husband, Parimal Gondhia, 45, went on to stab her 14 more times in the back, neck and across her hand before she managed to fight back.

"I wanted to scream for help and ran for the window, but he jumped on me and covered me with his body so I couldn't breathe at all," she told the Guardian.

"There was blood flowing out of me and, in that moment, I gave in. I thought, that's it' and I resigned to the fact that he was killing me."

Mrs Gondhia had been married for six years before she realised there was nothing she could do to change her husband's controlling and aggressive behaviour, and filed for divorce.

Beatings prompted her to report the domestic abuse to police, but they told her she did not have enough evidence.

So when her husband went away for a weekend she borrowed £2,000 from friends to apply for an injunction banning him from their home in Baron Gardens, Barkingside.

But when Gondhia was served with the injunction at work he was so enraged that one of his colleagues rang Mrs Gondhia and told her to get out of the house before he returned.

"I said I didn't want an argument, that I was leaving.

"He said, No, you're not going anywhere, because you are going to die'."

Gondhia interrogated and beat her for ten hours while cutting his own wrists and swallowing painkillers and methadone in an apparent attempt to kill himself.

Mrs Gondhia tried to get out through the front door, but her husband dragged her back, painting the floor with her blood.

She said: "It was like a horror film - all I could think about was trying to save my life."

Eventually she managed to escape. He was arrested, admitted grievous bodily harm and false imprisonment, and was locked up for seven years.

He was also ordered to pay £4,000 to his ex-wife and has been placed on the dangerous offenders' register.

After staring death in the face, Dorota Gondhia has urged other victims of domestic violence to turn their abusers in before it's too late.

Around 1,500 domestic violence incidents have been reported to Redbridge Police since April, and Detective Inspector Ronan McManus from the Redbridge Community Safety Unit said that on average, each had been subjected to around 35 attacks before calling.

Mrs Gondhia contacted police when she realised, through research and via therapy, that despite hoping for her husband to change, he was a textbook example of an aggressor who blamed her for his aggression, denied his violent side, and claimed it was not as bad as she said.

Although he could be an affectionate and jovial person at times, his bouts of abuse came in cycles - the distance between which became shorter and shorter.

She said: "Now I know there are signs, and once it starts, it doesn't stop. At one time I hoped there would be exceptions, but there are not, and women shouldn't put up with it."

When Mrs Gondhia turned to agencies for refuge she found she was not entitled to free legal aid or a place to stay as a working woman, and police said the crime was too difficult to prove.

Det Insp McManus said: "It is easy to document assaults, but it is hard to evidence that type of abuse. That does not mean if you tell the police, we will not listen to you. If you are suffering from domestic violence, you must tell someone. Anyone."

Mrs Gondhia said: "I was extremely lucky not to be killed. For someone to be killing you is the worst thing that can ever happen to you, but the sad thing is that it is quite common, and there are so many women who don't survive. I was just exceptionally lucky to get out."