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CAFE praises efforts in Canada to curtail domestic violence and provide services for its victims, with 627 shelters now available for abused women.

The report argues for continuing to give priority to female victims, because they are the ones more likely to be in fear of their lives. But executive director Justin Trottier points out that many men also suffer, and says “It is appropriate that some resources be focused on that population.” At the moment there is almost no assistance.

Other countries have been making similar discoveries. British novelist and veteran campaigner Erin Pizzey, founder of the U.K.’s first women’s refuge in 1971, has said that “both men and women in interpersonal relationships can be violent” and has long advocated that domestic violence be freed of gender stereotypes.

The issue of male victims in the U.K. was given prominence recently with the sad case of Alex Skeel, whose female partner was sentenced to seven and a half years’ imprisonment after coercively controlling his everyday life and subjecting him to persistent physical abuse so violent that it left him near death.

Many female victims do not report domestic violence. They may be too terrified to do so; they may have become too emotionally dependent on their dominant partners to risk breaking away; they may not want to risk destitution.

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Male victims are even less likely to report, but probably for different reasons. Of course, it cannot enhance a man’s self-esteem to admit that his partner knocks him around.