Child safety

Desperately needing advice.

I’ve just broken up with my partner of 5 years and sons dad. He was violent in our relationship & suffers with a mental illness. I couldn’t handle anymore how his anger and impulsive behaviour was affecting myself & our son. I never used to know who I was waking up next too, and I was always walking on egg shells waiting for him to lash out at any inconvenience. The last straw was a month ago I was driving & we had a small disagreement. He jumped out of the car while I was driving, I was contemplating leaving him there because I was scared of what he would do to me but then I was also scared of what if he killed himself when clearly he’s not in a good mindset. I waited for him to get back in the car and biggest mistake. Our son in the back crying, I felt like a horrible mum having him see this. He continued to scream and yell at me the whole way back to his house punching the dash & name calling me. He ripped his pants as he jumped out and screamed that it was my fault & I’ll be paying to replace them.

These sort of behaviours were very regular. Threats to harm himself or others, inflicting pain on himself, pushing & intimidating me, locking me in rooms, throwing, punching objects and walls, screaming & namecalling all infront of our son. Flash forward to now, he sees our son once a week for a couple of hours but each time I drop him off he yells and screams at me over the top of our son because I’m not giving in & going back. Today after I picked our son up he was yelling at me outside my car window so I tried to drive off, he quickly jumped through the window in the car & refused to get out. I can’t keep dealing with this. I don’t know my rights, I feel like a horrible mum putting my son through this. I don’t want to continue taking him over there as I fear for his safety. I’ve thought about taking a DV order out on him but I have little to no evidence of this happening just a few text messages.

Has anyone been through similar? I’ve always wanted my son to have a relationship with his dad. But not if it’s going to possibly impact his or my safety.