Yesterday marked White Ribbon Day, an annual male-led event that aims to end violence against women.

As the White Ribbon Campaign point out on their website, men are by far the biggest offenders when it comes to domestic violence, with 55,000 convicted of the crime in 2010.

However, in that same year, 4,000 women were also convicted - a 169pc increase from 2005 over the duration of five years. Experts have speculated that the trend could be down to an increase in violent behaviour among women, or a growing willingness among men to report the crimes.

In this context, it is notable that The ManKind Initiative, a male domestic abuse charity, has run out of money.

Established in the late nineties as a helpline that offered support to men for a wide range of issues, including mental health problems and child access issues, the charity now focuses solely on the taboo subject of male domestic abuse.

Yet despite years of both reliably offering support to victims and helping raise awareness for the issue of male domestic abuse, the storm clouds are gathering. And earlier this month, Chairman Mark Brooks had to tell the attendees of the ManKind Initiative's annual conference that the charity is skint.

"The grant-making trusts which provided funding to the ManKind Intiative have stopped supporting the charity," Brooks tells me, "and the few private donations that have sustained the Initiative since then are wearing thin."

And so the annual conference, held the day before International Men's Day, may very well have been the charity's last.

Male domestic abuse is a prevalent problem; according to the British Crime Survey 5pc of men (compared to 7pc of women) experienced some form of abuse in 2011. And yet, ManKind's helpline will soon cease to exist.

"Public policy for the past forty years or so has focused only on the female victims" Mark Brooks

While Brooks is adamant that the charity will continue in some capacity, he worries that the help and advice they can offer victims will be considerably lessened. So why, when headway was finally being made, has the fight against male domestic abuse taken yet another hit?

"I think that there are a few reasons," says Brooks. "Public policy for the past forty years or so has focused only on the female victims. This has resulted in the ideological and mistaken view that domestic abuse should be defined as a gendered crime, rather than a general crime.

This viral video, produced by the ManKind Initiative, showed the indifference with which people view male domestic abuse Credit: Youtube

"This view has dominated both the academic and political narratives surrounding the issue, and the professional practices that support any identified victims. As a result, the majority of male victims have been overshadowed by their female peers, and their voices have been stifled.

"Another reason," Brooks continues, "is that men are reluctant to come forward, because being a victim at the hands of a woman undermines their sense of masculinity, bringing with it embarrassment, shame and a fear of not being believed. These factors mean that many men are reluctant to come forward - and even more so when the public policy issue means that there are so few services available to them."

Last year, The Mankind Initiative produced an award-winning video to illustrate how gender stereotypes affect the perception of male domestic abuse. The video went viral, and began a fervent online discussion about the taboo subject of women using violence against men.

For almost 20 years, it has been conversations such as these that the ManKind Initiative has tried to start. Their helpline and website offers advice and support to over 100,000 men every year, and they run training sessions and awareness campaigns the whole year round.

"What we try to do," explains Brooks, "is to ensure that all male victims of domestic abuse - and their children, if they have them - can escape from the situation they've found themselves in. We also want to ensure that recognition and support for male victims is fully integrated and mainstreamed in society's view of domestic abuse and in the statutory delivery of domestic abuse services. This would include making sure domestic abuse is not seen as a gendered crime."

"Society tends to hold the view that only women can be victims. This feeds into the whole issue that being a man and admitting or claiming that you are a victim is one of Britain’s last taboos."

The prohibitive nature of male domestic abuse is why Brooks believes the ManKind Initiative has been jettisoned by its sponsors. And although the changes that the charity has made are notable, the recent funding cuts mean that the job may be left half-done.

"The majority of male victims have been overshadowed by their female peers, and their voices have been stifled" Mark Brooks, Chairman of the ManKind Initiative

"Public policy and service provision is still very much geared to female victims," says Brooks, "which means that there are fewer opportunities for male domestic abuse charities to receive support from the state. And though we are grateful that some female support organisations have begun to help male victims, there is still the consensus that these are female support charities which also help men rather than treating the two as equals from the outset.

"Something we do want to emphasise, however, is that we are not advocating or campaigning for money to be taken from female victims and given to male victims – that would be morally wrong. We want to find a compromise, a way in which male victims have their voices heard and needs met, but not at the expense of female victims."

Domestic abuse is viewed as a 'gendered' issue, with men being stereotyped as the perpetrators Credit: Twitter

And while this may be a difficult solution to reach, The ManKind Initiative believes that with a little more time it could be achieved. However, social attitudes appear to have conspired against the aims of the charity.

"I do not understand the motivation of those who want to dismiss male domestic abuse as a non-issue or pretend it does not happen," says Brooks. "Every victim of domestic abuse, be they male or female, should receive support based on their need as an individual. Their gender, race, sexuality etc are obviously important factors and may influence the type or style of support that they receive, but there shouldn’t be limitations placed on what support is available depending on how you fit into each of those categories.

"In an ideal world, and I hope that this happens in the next decade, every service or charity supporting domestic abuse victims would support both female and male victims and treat them equally based on the individual needs of the victim. You may, as I said, have different services or approaches but the bottom-line is that everyone gets the support they need, regardless of who they are."

For more information on male domestic abuse, visit mankind.org.uk