A victim of domestic abuse has spoken out about the need to put offenders on a register.

Akorede Odutayo, who lives in Charlton, Greenwich, first met her boyfriend in 2012.

It was 2013 when he beat her up for the first time.

Ms Odutayo said: “We had an argument at his mum’s house and all I remember was him hitting my face.”

He later messaged her apologising and said it would never happen again, but when she became pregnant the beatings became more frequent.

She said: “Each time that it happened he would send me long messages explaining how much he loved me and said that it wasn’t going to happen again.”

But the violence never ceased.

Ms Odutayo explained: “One time he came to my house when I was pregnant, and I was alone.

“I thought it was my sister because he had covered the peep-hole with his hand, so I couldn’t see who it was.

“When he came into the house he started hitting me, all because I said I was going out with my friend.”

One day he beat her so badly in front of their two-year-old son that she felt her eye pop.

She lost sight in that eye and now has a prosthetic eyeball, but it was at that time that she decided “enough was enough”.

During their relationship Ms Odutayo did not realise she was in an abusive relationship and hid the abuse from her family.

She said: “If the abuse wasn’t physical it was mental, I felt isolated like I could not go anywhere.”

Her ex-boyfriend has recently been released from prison after serving only eighteen months of a three-year sentence.

However, because there is no way to monitor offenders of domestic violence, Ms Odutayo feels like her ex-boyfriend isn’t really having to face the consequences of his actions.

She said: “It’s like he is getting out of prison and he hasn’t even been there in the first place. There is no system to keep tabs on him so he can just continue with his life as normal.

“I worry that something will happen to his next girlfriend, I am worried about her safety.”

This is why she believes there should be a register of people convicted of domestic abuse, just as there is for sexual offenders.

She added: “If you’re in a relationship with someone and you’re in love it can be hard to leave them but if you know that they are violent before you start a relationship with them you would not start a relationship with them in the first place.”

In 2016 there were almost 150,000 incidents of domestic abuse in London alone.

Statistics also show that four in 10 survivors of domestic abuse are repeat victims.

Members of the London Assembly have been campaigning for a change in the law to make sure that domestic abusers cannot target women like Akorede again.

In September 2017 the assembly wrote a cross party letter to MPs asking for their support in enlisting a Domestic Abusers Register.

They recommended that the system could work in the same way as the sex offenders’ register, allowing police to hold information on perpetrators in order to better protect survivors.

The government is now reviewing the Domestic Abuse Bill and assembly members are hoping that it will be include a “domestic abuse register”.

Assembly member Len Duvall, who wrote a report on domestic violence last year, said: “It is a crime and it is a crime that leads to murder.

“There is a list for sexual offenders and now we need something more for people that commit serious cases of domestic violence and hopefully the list would be able to help the police manage the risk posed by offenders of domestic violence.

“I want to encourage people to debate domestic violence, know that they do not have to suffer and get the issue out there.”