Mary Wakeham is the Founder and Chief Executive of Refuge4Pets, a charity providing foster care for the companion animals owned by victim survivors escaping domestic abuse in Devon and Cornwall. She also carries out sociological research into the circumstances in which people and pets are subjected to physical and emotional abuse at the hands of their own family members. She told John Bonner how her findings shed new light into the dark corners where the perpetrators use animals as tools to help them exert coercive control over their victims.