When Trudi Burgess was rushed to intensive care with a broken neck and her two adult children hurried to be beside her, they realised that despite the impediment of a tube in her throat helping her to breath that she was trying to tell them something.
And they finally realised that the word she was miming was 'sorry'.
She was actually apologising for having been brutally attacked by her partner.
The horrific attack has left the 57-year-old teacher tetraplegic and still requiring full time hospital treatment today, ten months on, including having spent three months in ICU on a ventilator, unable to breathe on her own, or speak or move.
The man who did this to her, serial abuser Robert Easom, 56, faces years in prison after being found guilty of grievous bodily harm by a jury in just 27 minutes.
Today those children, Jackson, 27, and Gina, 28, are still trying to understand how the man who did this to her managed to infiltrate their previously happy family to take control of their mother and isolate her from them.
And Jackson told The Daily Mail that they only discovered the extent of the regime of violence Eason used against her when police found a diary of abuse on her phone over severals years up to his final and cruellest attack on their mother.
The siblings had had a perfect childhood with two loving parents - Trudi had been a successful singer performing with and marrying her musical partner Craig Burgess who she was with from the age of 17.
When Trudi Burgess was rushed to intensive care with a broken neck and her two adult children hurried to be beside her, they realised that despite the impediment of a tube in her throat helping her to breath that she was trying to tell them something
Trudi had been a successful singer performing with and marrying her musical partner Craig Burgess who she was with from the age of 17
The horrific attack has left the 57-year-old teacher tetraplegic and still requiring full time hospital treatment today
Everytime Trudi tried to leave Easom would beg her to stay and act remorseful claiming he was 'just trying to teach her a lesson'
Robert Easom (pictured), 56, faces years in prison after being found guilty of grievous bodily harm by a jury in just 27 minutes
But in 2016, Craig was diagnosed with brain cancer, dying later that year, leaving Trudi, who had never been alone in her adult life, at a complete loss.
It was in that first year of grief, vulnerable and still grappling with her monumental loss, that she was first approached by Eason, who had been her sister's gardener.
It was because of this vulnerability
And it was at this moment of vulnerability that she was hit upon by Eason - and the siblings now believe he picked her out because of her vulnerability.
Speaking for the first time, her son Jackson, who is raising funds to pay for his mother's care when she is eventually allowed to leave hospital, said: 'She met my Dad when they were 17 years old and they had an incredibly loving relationship.
'They fell madly in love and we saw that as children. They were always incredibly close.
'Then my dad died about nine years ago and that put my mum at a loss.'
It was at this point that Trudi had met Easom, who her son now describes as a 'malignant presence', when he was working as her sister's gardener.
Outwardly their relationship appeared 'loving and passionate' but they now know that within months it had turned abusive.
Jackson said: 'He did what narcissists do - they find someone who is malleable, someone who is vulnerable, someone who is very kind and loving - which my mum is - and they sink their teeth in.
'It was quite a long process. My mum is not a crazy person - he must have shown some affection and charm at least in the early stages.
'But then as time went on, it became insidious and became worse and worse.
'He took advantage of someone who was very vulnerable and who was not thinking clearly. I think he did that consciously.'
Her son added:'He was a terrible bloke and she knew that we thought that. And as so often happens, it puts a divide between us. So she kind of kept her relationship very separate to her children, and to the extended family.'
Soon Eason was coercively controlling their mother, cutting her off from them and her friends, while enforcing his control with physical abuse.
And Trudi began documenting that abuse in the notes of her phone—which her children only learned of after he had left her so physically and mentally shattered.
The notes also created a comprehensive timeline of the abuse, which would become vital evidence during Easom's trial.
They revealed how he would consistently degrade her—forcing her to clean up spilled food, shoving her against furniture, yelling at her and driving dangerously on purpose to scare her.
In February 2018 Easom dragged Trudi into a hotel bathroom in York and threatened her, before quoting a line from the Sylvester Stallone film Rambo: 'Don't push or I'll give you a war.'
In 2019 he dragged her upstairs by the head, banging it against each step.
In 2021, during another weekend trip to York, he wrapped her head in a bedsheet until she couldn't breath.
Everytime Trudi tried to leave Easom would beg her to stay and act remorseful claiming he was 'just trying to teach her a lesson'.
Her son said: 'I was incredibly upset to see those notes and see how long she had been enduring this abuse for.
In 2016, Craig was diagnosed with brain cancer, dying later that year, leaving Trudi, who had never been alone in her adult life, at a complete loss
Trudi's family were kept in the dark about what she was going through behind closed doors
Trudi spent three months in the intensive care unit with doctors fearing she would never be able to breath again on her own. Craig is pictured here with their daughter
Trudi met Craig when they were 17 years old and they had an 'incredibly loving relationship'
'She knew she had to document it because it had got so bad and so if it ever came to it she would have a record of it.'
Speaking in court this week - through a video filmed from her hospital bed - Trudi explained how she had become caught up in a cycle of abuse, with Easom continuously eroding her self-esteem.
Yet all this time Trudi's family were kept in the dark about what she was going through behind closed doors.
Jackson added: 'There would be times when she wouldn't come home for quite long periods of time. We didn't spend long periods of time away from each other and then she would go to his.
'Sometimes she would not be back for a week, 10 days, two weeks sometimes.
'She has since told us that she did not come home sometimes because of the abuse.
'On a couple of occasions she might have had a physical mark on her face and she would want to let it heal before she would see us again as she was worried we would ask questions.'
One day when she did come with a bruise on her face and her son asked her what she had done, she told him a piece of wood had fallen on her face when she was getting timber for the log burner.
'I have incredible regrets now that I wasn't more astute and intuitive,' her son added. 'I knew he was a bad person, and I knew he was coercive, but I didn't think it was physical. And that's what was so shocking.
'She did everything she could to hide it from us and she didn't want us to know. She was protecting us - she has told me that since - and she did not want us to stress us out when we had enough on our plates as young adults trying to make lives for ourselves.'
By February 17 this year, Trudi decided she had had enough 'finally plucking up the courage to leave'.
When he asked her if she would be making cottage pie for dinner, as she usually would on a Monday, she told him no as their relationship was over.
It was then, at his home in Chipping in the Ribble Valley, that he flew into a blind and 'uncontrollable' rage pressing his hands down on Trudi's head.
Sobbing in court, she said: 'I've never felt anything like it; I felt my neck break; and I started to feel that I was going numb.
'I think I screamed but ...I had no voice; he just kept folding my head in and in and in. I kept thinking: 'He's gonna stop now'; and: 'I'm gonna die'.'
Afterwards she told Easom: 'Oh my God; I can't feel anything in my body; you've ruined both our lives.'
After begging him to call 999; Easom eventually got hold of an operator telling them there’d been an accident and that Trudi had fallen out of bed.
She was later rushed to Royal Preston Hospital into the intensive care unit; the same hospital where her late husband was taken care of.
Recalling the moment he arrived to his mother; Jackson said: ‘I just had this horrible full circle moment thinking I am here again; walking down the corridor with my sister to see something I don’t really want to see but I am trying to be really strong; particularly now my dad’s gone; to be there for her.
‘She was conscious; she was awake; had a very large tube down her throat; you could see her body was lifeless and limp. She couldn’t speak because she didn’t have her vocal cords working. She also couldn’t even mime because she had this tube down her mouth.
‘But as soon as she saw my sister and I; tears started to roll down her cheeks and she started to mime ‘I’m sorry’ ‘I’m sorry’ several times.’
And while Jackson had seen his father's health decline, he said watching his mother lie in the ICU bed was different as 'shrouded in this horrible darkness' because of the man who put her there.
He said: ‘You are dealing with this double burdon because of the specific injury, which is horrific, but also knowing that this was inflicted on her by someone we knew very well and which we knew, and has been proven now, was done with intention.’
Easom had told police at the time of Trudi’s accident that the incident had been a ‘playfight gone wrong’.
Trudi’s recovery journey will continue to be a long and grueling process, with Jackson and Gina now trying to raise at least £100,000 on Go Fund Me to help their mother once she is allowed home.