The silence of the courtroom is shattered by the desperate sound of Rainne Stewart’s voice.
The 999 call to police lays bare her naked terror at the brutal actions of the man she loves.
Rainne’s boyfriend Kristian Howell – the 28-year-old part-owner of Aberdeen city centre coffee shop Milkjug – has now admitted carrying out a prolonged and violent assault upon her that night in March 2020.
In the disturbing recording, Rainne can be heard sobbing uncontrollably as she tells the call handler that Howell has “hit her really badly” and that he is still in the house.
Two years after this incident, Rainne was found dead in her bedroom. She had taken her own life, aged just 26.
“She loved him to the end,” Rainne’s younger sister, Jaymie-Lee, said of Howell. “He had his own troubles, and she really sympathised with that.
“Rainne always saw the good in people. I know people always say that, but Rainne really did.”
Her mum Melanie added: “But when the attack happened her mental health declined rapidly. Her wounds might’ve healed, but her mental health didn’t heal.
“After the assault, she came home from the hospital to us so we could take care of her. She was badly beaten. She was black and blue. She was unrecognisable and had his handprints across her neck. She had scratches all over her.
“Rainne said she believed he’d tried to kill her because he only stopped when she blacked out.
“She managed to get back up and run out of the room and lock herself in the living room, and call the police.”
‘She thought she could change him’
And yet, even after this horrific assault, Rainne continued to see her attacker.
“She thought she could change him, which a lot of people in a domestic violence situation think,” Melanie said, but added that despite this her daughter still wanted to go ahead with the criminal case to ensure Howell was answerable for his actions.
“She wanted him to be held accountable and know that there were going to be ramifications if he ever did anything like that to her again,” her mum said.
“Rainne wanted Kristian to know that it wasn’t okay what he’d done, and that she would push forward with another conviction if it happened again.”
“The whole case took a toll on her,” Jaymie-Lee adds. “But she didn’t want this happening to anyone else – that was her driving force for going through with the case. Hopefully, she can do that now.”
The death of a child, especially under such tragic circumstances, is unimaginable, and yet Melanie Stewart has been forced to live out that nightmare.
Her daughter struggled often with her mental health, but prior to meeting Howell, she had seen improvements in Rainne.
She had felt strong enough to try online dating, matching with Howell, then a law student, on Tinder.
“Within two weeks there were red flags showing up, controlling behaviour, but she was already head over heels for him. Rainne was very all or nothing,” Jaymie-Lee recalls.
A number of alleged incidents that the family deemed as red flags no longer make up the charges facing Howell. Crucially, Rainne is no longer here to corroborate them.
On March 24 this year, the first day of trial, Howell pleaded guilty to one charge of assault to injury against Rainne, based on her significant injuries that were photographed by police and the 999 call she made on the evening of March 19 2020.
Coercive behaviour charges dropped
He admits to seizing her neck and shoving her into a radiator, climbing on top of her and compressing her neck so that her breathing became restricted.
Howell then repeatedly punched Rainne in the face and head.
But charges relating to alleged instances of coercive behaviour – such as threatening to leave Rainne unless she made payment of food, gifts and holidays to Howell, deleting her social media accounts and confiscating her bank cards – were dropped.
Occasions where Rainne claimed Howell restricted her from seeing friends or family, restricting her mealtimes, refusing to eat meals she cooked and throttling her and pushing her into a wardrobe were also dropped due to lack of evidence.
“[Howell] was very controlling of her,” her sister said. “At the start, you wouldn’t have been able to notice the signs, it was verbal things, it was chipping and chipping away at her.”
‘He made her feel ugly’
Her mother claims that at home in Inverurie, Rainne was a strict vegetarian but would eat meat when she was with Howell at his home in Aberdeen.
She also didn’t drink alcohol, but Rainne said she would do so with him, Melanie remembers.
“She said he would control her eating. When she came home to us, she was skin and bone. Rainne had never had any trouble with eating before that,” she said.
Jaymie-Lee added: “Rainne said he made her feel ugly, and like she didn’t have any prospects – that she wouldn’t have a life without him.”
In fact, as her sister points out, Rainne had been accepted on a BA course at the Open University prior to her death.
“To the end she loved him, right to the end,” Jaymie-Lee sighed. “It’s sad to think that he was the love of her life, and he gets to go on after doing that to her – he gets to live his life.”
‘The world is a darker place without Rainne’
Asked if she believes now whether Howell truly loved her sister, Jaymie-Lee shakes her head uncertainly: “I don’t know.”
“Rainne was a unique and loving force,” her mother interjects, looking out the window, her face still bearing the emotional scars of loss too great to fathom. “It wouldn’t be fair for her memory to be crushed under the victim title.”
“She didn’t see herself as a victim,” her sister Jaymie-Lee added.
“I know when people die, they try to say that they were angelic and they could do no wrong, but Rainne really was one of the most gentle people you could ever meet,” Melanie continued.
“She saw the beauty in every person. She loved and marvelled in everything. The world is a darker place without someone like Rainne in it – she was a shining light.”
If you are affected by any issues in this story, help and advice can be found through the bereavement charity SOBS and The Samaritans.