THE former girlfriend of convicted child killer Paul Oldacre today spoke of the three year reign of terror she suffered while she was with him.

Tina Seabrook, 25, told the Evening Advertiser how Oldacre, who on Thursday was sentenced to life for murdering his son, used to beat her and abuse the two children they had together.

When Swindon police called to tell her that Oldacre had been unanimously found guilty by a jury at Bristol Crown Court, she said it felt like all her troubles had gone away and she could finally escape her past.

"When I was told, I just let out a huge sigh of relief," she said.

"I can now look to the future and get on with my life without living in fear of him anymore."

She knows that while she can breathe a sigh of relief, the future could still hold reminders of her past as her two daughters grow up and begin to ask about their father.

"My eldest daughter remembers him and one day I might have to face her asking me questions about her daddy," she said.

"I will tell her that he is in prison for killing her stepbrother and that if she wants to see him she can, but I will not be dragged back into his life. I don't want anything to do with him ever again."

Miss Seabrook, who is two years younger than Oldacre, first met him when she was about 16.

They started seeing each other and she felt the relationship had a future until the night he first lost his temper.

"He came around to see me and he was messing around, chucking teddies and things at me," she said. "Then all of a sudden I felt this really sharp pain in my eye and he started shouting at me saying he never wanted to see me again then stormed out of the house."

For whatever reason Oldacre had lost his temper and thrown a stiletto shoe at her, cutting her eye.

The next day he wrote a letter to Miss Seabrook, pleading for her forgiveness, saying what he had done was a one off and he would never do it again.

In spite of her mother's protests, she gave him one more chance and took him back.

A few months later Oldacre moved in with Miss Seabrook and her mother in Park South and the violence started again.

Miss Seabrook returned home one day to find Oldacre and her mother fighting. Oldacre, she said, held his fist in her mother's mouth. As Tina tried to separate them, Oldacre punched her in the stomach.

Although they did not know it at the time, Tina was pregnant with the couple's first child.

The violence continued after the birth of their baby girl, Oldacre used to slap Tina around the head and pull her hair. "He always hit me where he knew there would be no bruises," she claimed.

Eventually the couple moved into a home in Nythe, which is when Tina started to become concerned about Oldacre's attitude towards the baby.

"He never did anything to help with her," she said. "He always said he liked his sleep, and could never bother to get up and feed her or anything like that. Once I came home to find she had climbed up on to a radiator and he was just sat there. I ran over to get her, but she fell off and scratched all her back.

"He has locked her in bedrooms and left her in the house on her own, all kinds of things."

Another time Oldacre was so frustrated by the baby's incessant crying at night that he put her in a carrycot and shut her in the bathroom with the light off.

"He was shouting and screaming at her to shut up and he kept pushing me out of the way every time I tried to get to her.

"Eventually I just went and sat on my bed and waited for him to leave her so I could get to her. I just kept thinking 'please don't hurt my baby'."

Today, Miss Seabrook is still on anti-depressants and receives counselling as a result of the emotional, physical and mental torture she suffered at the hands of Oldacre.

But, with him safely behind bars, she now just wants to get on with her life.