'Legal aid saved me from my ex-husband'

"I had a realisation that if I continued to stay, I would be normalising a toxic marriage to young children," she said. "My children would either grow and be like this person or grow and seek to marry someone like this person because that's what they knew and that's what they experienced in the home." As she was relying on universal credit while raising the children, Sarah had to turn to legal aid in order to escape. It enabled her to go to family court so she could take her children with her. Asked what she would have done had legal aid not been available, Sarah said: "I dread to think... I don't actually know what I would have done without the help that I received."