F OUR YEARS after what Paul Chivers calls “the event”, he still has flashbacks and nightmares. In 2014 his then wife split his head open with a hairdryer. By that point, says Mr Chivers, he had been on the receiving end of domestic abuse for ten years. His wife was given a 16-month prison sentence. Mr Chivers got custody of their daughter.

Police in Britain are discovering more such cases. Surveys of victims suggest that the prevalence of domestic abuse against men and women alike has not changed much in the past decade or so. About 4% of men and 8% of women report being mistreated at home. What has changed is that many more male victims are coming forward. Between 2012 and 2017 the number of male domestic-abuse victims recorded by the police each year more than doubled. (In the same period the number of female victims rose by 50%.) There is growing recognition that men can be victims of this crime, which encourages them to report it, says Mark Brooks of the ManKind Initiative, a charity.

Domestic-abuse services, historically designed for women, are adjusting accordingly. About 200 organisations in Britain provide services for male victims, up from 70 in 2012. A growing number have a refuge or safe housing for men, though in some areas, including London, there is none. Some organisations have rebranded themselves to show that their doors are open to anyone. Last year, for example, Northampton Women’s Aid became Northamptonshire Domestic Abuse Service. Images of men as victims are appearing more often on posters about domestic abuse.

Helping men is proving difficult. Dee Conlon of Victim Support, another charity, says they are less likely than women to accept assistance. One reason is that the abuse they suffer tends to be less severe: only about 5% of male victims are subject to what the law calls “coercive and controlling” behaviour, which affects 30% of abused women.

Another problem is that many men do not see themselves as victims at all. They view domestic abuse as something that happens only to women, says Iris Quar of Abused Men in Scotland, a support group. “They’ll call and say, ‘I’m not abused or anything, but…’ and then they’ll tell you this horrendous story,” she says. Louise Branch of North Somerset council says that men who seek help are usually too few for a peer-support meeting, something women recovering from abuse find helpful.

Some men fear they will not be believed. Mr Chivers says he delayed abandoning his marriage because leaving his daughter behind would have been “a cowardly thing to do”. Victim Support says many abusers have untreated mental illnesses. In recent years it has dealt with many older men whose wives are aggressive as a result of dementia.

A more sinister problem is that some of the men who present themselves as victims are in fact offenders. A review of 400 incidents of violence among couples by Marianne Hester of the University of Bristol found that about half of men recorded by the police as victims were named as perpetrators in other incidents involving the same partner. This is one reason why men seeking access to refuges and other services are screened, to make sure they do not pose a danger to others. That requires their consent and takes time, so some offenders slip through. Meanwhile, many real victims remain in the shadows.