By JUSTIN TROTTIER

Three Canadian sociologists have released a ground-breaking report in the journal Partner Abuse that fundamentally contradicts conventional wisdom on domestic violence.

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These researchers accessed raw data from the 2014 General Social Survey , a massive population survey regularly conducted by Statistics Canada to assess the extent of social problems in the country. What they found undermines the gender paradigm that portrays domestic violence as exclusively a manifestation of male domination over women.

On the contrary, men were found to be as likely as women to experience domestic abuse. Even more surprising, men were just as likely to suffer severe forms of violence like being hit or kicked. And most significant of all, men and women were found to suffer similar long-term mental health effects, including PTSD.

Consistent with expectations, women were more likely to be physically injured when severe violence did occur. Yet men are not immune to harm, with men accounting for one third of those suffering injury.

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Domestic abuse is a serious issue for women and comprehensive intervention programs must continue to expand to guarantee women live lives free of violence. But it’s not a zero sum game. Men also suffer severe abuse with serious consequences for them and their children. The difference is that men have virtually no support.

These findings will shock most people, but they raise no eyebrows in the research community. After decades of population surveys in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, the emerging academic consensus is that domestic violence is largely a gender symmetric phenomenon. The reason this is news to just about everyone else is that governments often base policy on those sources of data that reliably demonstrate significant gender asymmetry. Police data, for example, typically report that women are about 80% of the victims of domestic violence, a figure wildly inconsistent with population surveys.

The problem is that police statistics capture only instances of violence which are consistent with institutional policies. Police are often required to employ a “gender lens” when dealing with domestic violence. A male victim calling the police for help has a fair chance of finding himself arrested, an outrageous form of re-victimization that would be scandalous were police systematically treating female victims in this manner.

The Government of British Columbia, for example, provides guidance to law enforcement agencies in their Domestic Violence Response: A Community Framework for Maximizing Women’s Safety , requiring that “a gender lens should be applied to all responses to domestic violence in order to ensure the safety of women and their children.”

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The trouble with this common justification that a gender lens is needed to keep women safe is that it actually accomplishes the opposite. That is because the most common form of domestic violence is bilateral violence perpetrated by mutually violent couples, and this is precisely the scenario in which women are most likely to be injured. Mutual violence can escalate over time and results in a higher likelihood of greater injury. When we stop ignoring male victims, we may find more opportunities to block the escalation of violence, reducing the chance that a woman – or anyone – will be injured.

It’s time to modernize our approach to domestic violence by building public policy on the best evidence-based academic research. Not that this is merely academic to me. At the Canadian Centre for Men and Families , I receive calls every day from men in desperate need of help so they and their children can escape violence. That’s why we’re leading a multi-agency effort to build Toronto’s first shelter for abused men and children.

We’re partnering with women’s shelters to leverage the amazing expertise of these pioneering agencies. Collaborating around our common interest in eliminating all forms of violence could spark transformative change to benefit all families in crisis.

Justin Trottier is Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Men and Families.