A woman feared her children would be taken away if she reported her abusive partner's breaches of his intervention order.
The Royal Commission into Family Violence also heard her partner's threatening behaviour increased after the order was imposed, and that he followed her in his car and turned up at the family home.
In one harrowing incident, the man is said to have smashed a window and then cut the home's phone line to stop the woman from calling police.
"I thought he would kill me," the woman, who cannot be identified, told the commission on Thursday.
"The intervention order did nothing and it made him worse."
Before their relationship ended, the man's discipline of their children included running over their toys with the car, push-ups and sit-ups, and picking up leaves one by one, she said.
After the intervention order, his controlling and abusive behaviour escalated to "absolutely nuts".
"I was scared that if child protection knew how often he was breaching, they would try and take away the kids," the woman said.
"We're living in a virtual prison and he's free to breach as much as he wants, nothing stops him."
She said online harassment was still occurring but in-person breaches stopped once she joined a Victorian trial of the safety card - a wearable device that, when activated, opened a recorded line of communication to an operator, who could immediately alert police.
The commission was also told of a US-based initiative that brought police, legal and other family services under one roof.
Safe Futures Foundation chief executive Janine Mahoney said this allowed a woman to "come to one location and share her story once".
"San Diego, where the first justice centre was set up, had the highest level of domestic homicide in America ... down to one homicide last year," Ms Mahoney said.
"I think that's very telling."
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