Tony Veitch's comments on a punch in a rugby game were was a poor choice of words considering his past says Rachel Stewart.

There's no doubt that New Zealand's epidemic of domestic violence lies firmly at the feet of men. As does the solution.

Sorry boys, but it's just not acceptable to trot out the tired old line that women hit men too. It's a fact that men physically hurt women many times more than the reverse, and implying anything else is just another form of abuse towards us.

New Zealand has reached the pinnacle of world number one in domestic violence statistics. We now have the highest reported rate of intimate partner violence in the developed world.

Police undertook more than 100,000 investigations into domestic abuse last year. In 2013 children were present at 63 per cent of the callouts police attended.

Yet, it's estimated that 90 per cent of family violence goes unreported.

Think on that for a moment. Sit with it. Let it sink in.

It continues to fascinate and enrage me that the vast majority of men say nothing, do nothing, and appear to feel nothing about this horrific situation.

Of course, it's women who are doing the bulk of the speaking out and when we do, in many cases, we're immediately subjected to – you guessed it - threats of violence.

The Tony Veitch saga last week was a case in point. If you missed it let me avail you of the short version.

The sports commentator decided to post a moronic comment during the All Blacks vs France match saying that he "didn't get" the difference between "a punch" and "a fist to the face".

I say "moronic" because, unless you've been living in a cave, you'd know that Veitch was convicted in 2009 of injuring his former partner with reckless disregard after pleading guilty. In fact, he broke her back.

So while his online tittering on Facebook may simply have been a poor choice of words, he was inundated with messages from all and sundry about what an awful human being he is. Hard to disagree.

He quickly took to Facebook lashing out at his critics in a little rant about how ostensibly he was the victim in the whole broken back saga. Which set them off again.

Then his army of predominantly male fans decided to enter stage right.

They told the female commenters just what they could do with themselves. Their 'advice' involved dildos, slur after slur about their physical appearance, and that they just needed a few uppercuts to the head.

At no stage, that I'm aware of, did Veitch ask his band of merry men to back off. Silence. A fairly stock-standard response to the whole awful business of the prolific beating of women in this country.

So what would I have men do differently?

First off they need to use seriously loud voices about the issue. They have seriously loud voices about rugby, or anything else they deem worthy. Why not this?

They must speak up when other men make sexist and derogatory remarks about women in their presence. Because we all know that violence towards women stems from such casual misogyny. Don't we?

More than this, they need to act.

If men are aware of any woman being physically beaten and abused by her partner they need to send a posse around to have a friendly chat with him.

I do not say this lightly. My life experiences have taught me that men who habitually beat women tend to only respect the might and disapproval of other men.

The situation would improve if a father, a brother and a son – and a male friend or two for good measure – were to collectively approach the abuser of their daughter, sister, mother or friend. Call it an intervention.

Let the abuser feel the same fear the woman in his life has come to feel every single day. Just the threat of force would possibly be enough, but if it isn't, well, human nature being what it is you can probably guess the rest.

It's likely deemed a politically incorrect method, I know. However, ineffective laws and talk-fests and online shaming have only seen our domestic violence statistics steadily rising.

We call a bunch of good men who take the car keys off their drunk mate, potentially saving lives in the process, "bloody legends".

I'd call a bunch of good men who intervene in potentially saving a woman's life at the hands of a violent man "bloody legends" too. Wouldn't you?

Or does the fact that I've written this – a mere woman - qualify me for online comments about dildos, my physical appearance and uppercuts too?

I'm hopeful that will not be the case, but then I'm also hopeful that domestic violence against women will one day become socially unacceptable too.

Over to you, men.