I sensed there was a story in this somewhere, and began to research. With surprising ease, I found people who knew a man it had happened to. In fact I had – and still have – the same conversation over and over again when I tell people that I have written about this topic. I could script it, and it goes exactly like this…

Oh, that’s unusual. Then, more times than not, they laugh; men being battered by their wives is funny apparently. Then the person sobers a little and says … That needs to be talked about. Pause. Then … I know a guy it happened to.

An expert I spoke to in the late 90s opined that the situation for male victims then was much the same as it had been for women thirty years earlier. Around the same time, a senior policeman told me that we shouldn’t talk about male victims for fear that it takes the focus away from women.