There’s a lot about this that in hindsight doesn’t add up, I’m afraid I was very impulsive in my worry for her, so I didn’t even consider these things until she’d left, and the deletion of messages happened. I’m not sure why either, my only explanation is that she threatened to walk out or worse, so he agreed to her demand to leave and come here.
That’s why the context of this being a first time for him physically abusing her makes sense I think, this is not a regular occurrence, not from him.