When Stephanie's* partner called the police to report her, she was actually relieved.

Mark* had attacked her before.

She'd threatened to call triple-0, but he hid their phones.

But when Stephanie fought back on this night, Mark locked himself in a room in their house and called police to report that he'd been assaulted.

When two police officers arrived at their door, Stephanie's relief soon turned to panic.

After police interviewed Stephanie and Mark separately, the officers told her they'd evaluated the situation — and that she'd been identified as the predominant aggressor.

Shortly afterwards, she was in the back of a divvy van on her way to the police station, leaving her baby at home in a pram with her abuser.

At the station, police made an application for an intervention order against her.

Stephanie said Mark later said he called police "to get back at her". If so, it worked.

Stephanie was immediately banned from going back home.

On top of that, child protection services were called in to ensure she didn't pose a risk to her baby.

She would need to go to court to clear her name.

"I was removed, I was taken in the back of a divisional van like a criminal, I was locked in a room and then … I had to go to court [to] try to prove I'm not a risk to this man," Stephanie said.

Women's Legal Service Victoria looked at the cases of 500 clients. ( ABC News )

Her story is not unusual. Research by Women's Legal Service Victoria suggests Victorian police are repeatedly mistaking domestic violence victims for perpetrators — and bungling the issuing of intervention orders designed to protect them.

It looked at the cases of 500 clients in the Melbourne Magistrates Court between January and May of this year, and found one in eight police applications for intervention orders were made against the wrong person.

The research found cases where clients had been served intervention order applications despite not even being questioned by police.

It says others were questioned, but were not given access to an interpreter despite having limited English — and that at least one woman has been served with an intervention order application while in hospital recovering from injuries inflicted by her violent partner.

Police acknowledge past shortcomings

Victoria's Chief Commissioner of Police Graham Ashton acknowledged that historically, officers on the scene were misidentifying victims as perpetrators more often than the force wanted.

"The training that we've been providing through the centre of learning at the academy has been all about lifting the standard across the state in relation to that issue so that everyone gets good quality of training," he said.

"What we were finding was some parts of Victoria where we delivered specialist training were going well, other parts who didn't have access to that same training weren't going as well."

Graham Ashton says responding to family violence calls consumes a staggering 40 per cent of the work of Victoria Police.

Officers are called on to make judgments on the spot, in enormously stressful circumstances, where manipulation and deceit are often embedded in the conflict between partners.

When Stephanie's then-partner called the police, he claimed she was psychotic and heavily medicated. None of it was true.

When she was taken to the police station, she said she continually told the officers: "He hit me first, I am the victim."

But they didn't believe her.

"I feel like they were treating me like a screaming female who does this all the time, who's psychotic," she said.

"I would have liked to have been believed that my ex-partner was the one who … initiated the physical violence."

The police issued a family violence safety notice against Stephanie, banning her from returning to the home she shared with Mark.

Fortunately, she was able to stay with her parents. For other women, it can result in homelessness.

It took three court appearances before police agreed to withdraw their application for an intervention order against Stephanie.

They had been persisting with the order despite her then-partner asking police to drop it.

Stephanie's duty lawyer had identified her as a victim, rather than a perpetrator, and worked to have the application withdrawn.

Stephanie feared child protection would take her baby. ( ABC News: Margaret Burin )

"I was just so relieved that somebody actually believed me, because I don't know how I was going to prove that I was not the aggressor in this situation," Stephanie said.

But she also had other hurdles to jump, including convincing the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) that she did not pose a risk to her baby.

She still becomes emotional talking about having to convince a government worker that she would never hurt her child.

"I was worried they were going to take her away from me, it was so scary," she said.

Eventually, DHHS told Stephanie they had closed her case file and no action would be taken.

Identifying the aggressor a difficult task

Victoria Police has a code officers are meant to follow to identify the predominant aggressor in family violence incidents.

They're also required to fill out a risk assessment which involves identifying which person is more fearful, whether either person has defensive injuries or if there is a history of coercion, intimidation and violence.

But it's a complex task.

When police arrive at an incident, those involved might be highly emotional, drug or alcohol-affected or unwilling to disclose the full story of what has gone on.

The statistics show a woman is far more likely to be a victim, but not in every case.

One in six Australian women compared to one in 16 men have been subjected to physical or sexual violence by a current or previous cohabiting partner, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Personal Safety Survey.

Officers are receiving targeted training on how to identify perpetrators at the force's Family Violence Centre for Learning which was established in response to a recommendation of the Royal Commission into Family Violence.

But Women's Legal Service senior policy lawyer Marianne Jago said officers still seemed unfamiliar with the code of practice, and did not have the training required to deal with what are complex situations.

"[Aggressors] are gaming the system, they know that if they call the police first … that the police are more likely to believe they are the victim and not the aggressor," she said.

"It's much easier to have empathy for someone who looks like a victim, so who's crying and is really asking for your protection.

"So if she's not like that, if she's drug affected or if she's any range of factors that don't buy into the more appealing victim dynamic, it's harder for them to elicit that protective response from the police," she said.

Specialist backup required: men's referral service

The head of No To Violence, an organisation that works with male perpetrators of family violence and provides telephone counselling services, said the men who work with the service almost always present as the victim — of the system, the courts, or their partner's behaviour.

"This is a really hard job for the police when they're called to specific incidents, and partly it's because family violence is not an incident. It's a pattern of behaviour and a pattern of coercive control over time," No To Violence chief executive Jacqui Watt said.

Women's Legal Service Victoria says police officers need better training. ( ABC News )

"So we are worried that men are now seeing it as fit to claim victimhood as part of their tools and tactics in undermining their partner."

Ms Watt said police needed to become more sophisticated in assessing a single incident and how it might fit into a pattern of abuse.

"What I'd like to think is that we can provide specialist backup services within a short time of [police] being called to a certain incident," she said.

"So if there's any doubt in the police person's mind about whether this is a genuine victim situation or not, they've got someone to call."

Ms Jago acknowledged the difficulties police face in determining who needs protection, but denied it was an unsurmountable challenge.

"If every station spent an hour going through the code [of practice] and discussing their best practice and what they're expecting of their members, we could solve this really quickly," she said.

Ms Jago said the experience was "soul destroying" for women like Stephanie.

"You've just been through a family violence incident … and all of a sudden you're then facing continued violence because he hasn't been apprehended," she said.

"But on top of that, you're dealing with the loss of the idea of the police as protective."

Stephanie is certain she would never call the police again.

*Names have been changed