Many fear they will be arrested themselves (Picture: Getty Images)

Male victims of domestic abuse often avoid reporting attacks because they fear being arrested themselves.

More than 700,000 men are thought to experience violence from a partner every year – but new research has shown that they risk counter-accusations.

Dr Jessica McCarrick, a senior lecturer in Counselling Psychology at Teeside University, carried out a study with male victims of abuse. Men are often treated with suspicion by the criminal justice system, she told the Telegraph.

‘To find the courage to speak out, only to be accused of violence themselves, is incredibly disheartening and ultimately prevents countless men from reporting intimate partner violence,’ she said.




And Mark Brooks, chairman of the Mankind Initiative, said they’d experienced a rise in men asking them for advice after being falsely accused.

‘The type of thing we hear is “my wife or girlfriend has said if I leave, or tell anyone, she will say I was the one attacking her and she was just defending herself”,’ he said.

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The number of women convicted of domestic abuse has quadrupled in the last 10 years, going up to 3,735 in 2013/14 from 806 in 2004/05. It is not immediately clear how many arrests of male perpetrators of abuse against men there have been.

‘Intimate partner violence is an issue which affects men and women within both heterosexual and homosexual relationships and I would like to see increased funding to improve service provision and development in order to support all people affected by this issue,’ Dr McCarrick said.