Tina Nash has a recurrent nightmare in which she comes face to face with Shane Jenkin, the ex-boyfriend who blinded her. ‘He’s telling me he’s coming out of prison and in my dream I have forgiven him. I could fall back in love with him.’

She is on the brink of taking him back when she wakes, heart pounding, horrified that even now her mind can play tricks on her. ‘I’m screaming, sweating, struggling to breathe, thinking I am being attacked.’

In April 2012, Jenkin was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of six years. The case was so atrocious the police officer investigating it described it as the ‘most shocking’ he had encountered.

Twelve months earlier during a 12-hour assault, Jenkin gouged out Tina’s eyes with his fingers, rendering her blind.

Truro Crown Court heard it was one of the worst cases of domestic abuse the UK had ever seen. The one solace for Tina, now 44, who had been subjected to a tyranny of abuse during their 20-month relationship, was the belief that Jenkin, 45, would never be freed. Indeed, he has made a total of seven failed bids for parole – in each case he was deemed too dangerous.

In February, however, after 13 years in high-security jails and psychiatric hospitals, he was moved to an open prison – often used to prepare prisoners for release.

Tina has been told that as early as this summer, he will be allowed to walk the streets unsupervised, look for work and visit family.

The life Tina has painstakingly tried to rebuild has crumbled, her disbelief compounded by fear for her life. ‘I’m terrified. He could be stood right behind me in a shop and I wouldn’t have a clue because he blinded me. I know he wishes he’d killed me that night because then there would have been no witnesses.

Tina Nash had her eyes gouged out by her then-boyfriend in 2011

‘I feel very scared for my safety, the Parole Board has said he is vengeful and I’ve heard from people on his landing [prison wing] he couldn’t stop talking about me. I’ve been warned the first thing he’s going to do is come straight for me.’

Tina, who wrote a memoir about her experiences and has become a passionate campaigner for fellow victims, is talking over Zoom from her two-bedroom home in Cornwall, the location of which the Mail isn’t revealing for her security.

She hopes public outrage will force the Ministry of Justice to review its decision – a supporters’ petition calling for this has nearly 25,000 signatures so far.

‘I didn’t expect to be speaking about this so many years later,’ says Tina, ‘but I have to try and keep myself safe.’

She sits next to her beloved dog Marley and wears a crystal necklace, a testament to a spirituality she draws strength from. Her younger son, Liam, 17, has helped her connect to our video call. Her older son, Ben, 27, a shop manager, lives nearby.

‘They are my world,’ she says. ‘Without them, I’d have had nothing to live for. Being blind has felt like being buried alive. I feel suffocated.’

Four years after the attack she had glass eyes fitted, which means her blindness isn’t immediately obvious. Technology enables her to send text messages and shop online. Yet the scars of her ordeal run deep.

She is too scared of being attacked again to leave her house alone and has yet to meet up with many friends she knew before losing her sight.

In 2009, Tina had been a confident single 29-year-old mum who dreamed of training as a nurse. She met Jenkin in a nightclub in Penzance that August.

He already had a conviction for assaulting a man but Tina found him ‘charming and charismatic’.

They bonded over a shared love of music and Jenkin took things slowly, waiting three months before telling Tina he loved her as they lay in bed one evening.

He was caring towards her children and filled his flat with Christmas decorations because Tina loved the festivities. ‘He homed in on what I held dear,’ she says.

Perpetrator Shane Jenkin with Tina in the same year as the attack

That New Year’s Eve, after the pair lost each other at a nightclub and Tina finally found Jenkin at the entrance, he called her a ‘f***ing slut’.

She recalls: ‘He spat at me, pulled my hair and pushed me on to the pavement so hard my head smacked against the ground. I was devastated, confused, heartbroken.’

Yet when Jenkin turned up four days later, acting as if they were still a couple, Tina forgave him. ‘I thought I must have done something wrong,’ she says. While Jenkin didn’t apologise, he quickly ‘became loving again’, says Tina. ‘We’d go for walks on the beach and watch DVDs.’

Only much later would she realise Jenkin had groomed her to tolerate his violence. After the nightclub incident he attacked her again in April 2010 after Tina found out he’d been with another woman.

‘I said, “How dare you?”’ she recalls. Jenkin punched her in the face then threw her down the stairs.

‘I thought my neck was nearly broken as my face skidded along the carpet at the bottom,’ says Tina, who staggered outside for help.

A neighbour called the police and Jenkin was arrested. But he was released on bail and returned to Tina’s house the next day.

‘I was too petrified not to let him in,’ says Tina. ‘I said, “Why did you beat me up?” He replied, “I didn’t. Are you setting me up?”

‘I was confused, in shock. I couldn’t work out what was true. I hated what he’d done, but I still loved him and I was intimidated.’

Jenkin persuaded Tina to retract her statement and tell police she’d had an accident.

‘He made me believe he was the victim,’ she says. Police had enough evidence to prosecute without Tina’s statement and the case went to court. ‘He blamed me for that and beat me again.’

Jenkin was let off with a restraining order. But by now in a tangled web of abuse and dependence, Tina stayed in the relationship.

There are fears Jenkin could be released as early as this summer, leaving him able to attack his ex-partner once again

A pattern emerged in which he’d break the order, get arrested, be imprisoned for a week then break the order again.

In between jail sentences he continued to hurt her. ‘He worked out I wouldn’t open the door when my face was bruised so he made sure to punch me in the face, forcing me to isolate myself. I lost my family and friends. They warned me but felt there was nothing more they could do, and I ended up covering for him. He started to control me until I didn’t know who I was.’

Jenkin brainwashed Tina into believing it was the two of them against the rest of the world.

‘He made me feel we were in this together. I was scared social services would take my children from me. I didn’t want the police being called.’

In April 2011, five weeks after another prison stint for breaching his restraining order and beating Tina, Jenkin had promised her a fresh start. But one night she heard him offer his prescription sleeping pills to a neighbour.

Worried, she gently tried to remonstrate. ‘I gave him a look as if to say, “No,”’ she recalls. ‘Then I went to bed.’

Her next memory is being naked save for a bra around her waist, Jenkin on top of her with his hands around her neck. Police believe he had strangled Tina into unconsciousness so he could gouge out her eyes. He also broke her nose and jaw. ‘He was trying to kill me. I was making weird guttural noises and passing in and out of consciousness.’

She managed to get away from Jenkin enough for him to loosen his grip on her neck.

‘I said, “Shane, I’m sorry, I love you,” to calm him down. He said, “Your eyes are hanging out of your head. You’re blind. You’re never going to see your kids again, and it’s all your fault.”’

It was only then Tina computed she couldn’t see. ‘I brought my hand up to my cheek and my eyeball was hanging down...’ she breaks off during our call, in tears.

Jenkin dropped her into a bath full of cold water. ‘Shock had protected me from pain but suddenly it felt as if there were red hot pokers in my eyes.

‘He kept saying this was all my fault – that if I hadn’t argued with him, none of this would have happened.’ He dragged her naked into the living room, where he kept her prisoner all night. ‘I tried to stay calm, concentrating on the kids asleep upstairs... and I tried to keep quiet so they wouldn’t wake,’ says Tina. The next morning Jenkin let her call Liam’s father who rushed to the house.

Jenkin fled and was arrested four days later. Tina was admitted to the Royal Cornwall Hospital where she spent three weeks.

The force of his attack was so great doctors could see Jenkin’s nail marks in her eye sockets. He also broke her nose and jaw.

Her left eye was immediately removed but it would be months before they confirmed she would get no sight back in her right eye.

‘I thought I’d have to rely on people to take me to the toilet, to spoon-feed me. I was devastated. I didn’t feel human. I wanted to die, for the nurses to kill me,’ recalls Tina, who forced herself to put on a brave face when her children visited a fortnight later.

Aged three, Liam didn’t understand what had happened and wasn’t daunted by his mother wearing sunglasses covering temporary rubber eyeballs: ‘He came running straight to my bed.’ But at 13, Ben, who’d been told his mum had been attacked by Jenkin, was ‘very scared’, says Tina.

‘He sat down next to me, shaking. I took my glasses off to show him I was still here, still me, and told him the police had got Shane. This reassured him.’

After three weeks in hospital, Tina spent four months living with her sister and best friend as she acclimatised to her blindness. Ben became protective, insisting he push his mother in the wheelchair, and Liam also learned to help. On a cocktail of painkillers, sedatives, sleeping tablets and antidepressants, she says, ‘I slept a lot that first year.’

In April 2012, Jenkin admitted causing grievous bodily harm with intent at Truro Crown Court. He was sentenced to life in prison, to serve a minimum of six years.

‘The minimum sentence was so low because he changed his plea from attempted murder to GBH with intent,’ says Tina. ‘I was angry.’ The case shocked the nation and propelled Tina into the spotlight.

Her memoir, Out Of The Darkness, was published that October, and she became a campaigner for a domestic violence charity.

But she went on to suffer a breakdown. ‘For years I sat on my sofa. I could barely speak. I didn’t want to see anyone. I begged my doctor to section me.’

Panic attacks ‘all day and all night’ left her struggling to breathe, which turned into crippling anxiety about dying.

In 2016, she finally got counselling. More helpful was her relationship with a builder introduced to her by friends that year.

They were together two years before separating amicably. ‘I realised what a normal relationship was like.’

Ben continued to live with Tina while Liam was raised by his dad.

She is heartbroken she hasn’t seen her children grow up, instead having to make do with listening to them talk about their favourite computer games and imagining their faces.

It was in November last year that Tina was aghast to be told of the decision to move Jenkin to an open prison. ‘They said a parole hearing had found he was showing empathy to his victims.’

She insists any empathy Jenkin has demonstrated is fake: ‘Psychopaths mimic people’s reactions. I don’t think he knows what empathy feels like.’

Her nightmares are compounded by flashbacks at the prospect of his potential release. ‘I’ll suddenly zone out. I’m being thrown down the stairs, nearly breaking my neck. It’s as if I’m actually there.’

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘This was a horrific crime and our thoughts remain with Ms Nash. All prisoners, including those serving life sentences, must pass a robust risk assessment before any move to open conditions and we do not hesitate to move them back to closed prisons if they break the rules.’ Which is of scant comfort.

‘Shane making progress lessens my progress,’ she says. And it’s hard to see what’s fair about that.

Find out more about Tina's petition at change.org/p/stop-serial-violent-offender-shane-jenkin-being-released