LONDON LETTER:There is some evidence that women in their 20s are more likely to inflict harm than older women, writes MARK HENNESSY

IAN McNICHOLL feared returning to his home in Haycroft Street in Grimsby. Behind the curtains, his partner Michelle Williamson subjected him to two years of abuse, during which she poured boiling water over him and stubbed out cigarettes on his body.

The two had earlier come to the attention of morning TV viewers, during an appearance in 2007 on the Jeremy Kyle Show on ITV – where the tawdry, cruelly banal affairs of dysfunctional Britain are giving a daily airing.

In April 2008 McNicholl was hit repeatedly with a metal bar and a hammer by Williamson. After she was sentenced to seven years in jail a year later, he said the local hospital had feared for a time that he could lose his arm.

Like many other victims of domestic violence, male or female, McNicholl endured suffering for an extraordinary length of time, lying on a bed for days as Williamson burnt him with cigarettes before he finally involved the police.

The Williamson case is not usual, however. Significantly more women than men suffer abuse from partners. Pressed to take tougher action, the police and the crown prosecution service are more likely than ever to take prosecutions.

More than 55,000 men were prosecuted in 2010 in England and Wales, up from 29,000 in 2005, but the gap between men and women is narrowing.

Last year, almost 4,000 women were successfully prosecuted. Opinion divides on the reason for this increase. For some, it is evidence that people are more willing to report abuse now than ever before. For others, it is evidence that women are becoming more violent.

Though far from proven, there is some evidence that women in their 20s, spurred on by rising alcohol consumption and other social changes, are more likely to inflict harm on their partners than older women.

Too many male victims refuse to go to the police because they feel they will not be believed. More than 40 per cent of those who did, says a survey conducted by men’s rights group Mankind, say they were not believed.

In a third of cases, officers correctly identified that the man was the victim, but did nothing about it and left; while in a quarter of cases they offered sympathy.

The violence is not a one-off moment of rage. The British crime survey of 2008/09 reported that almost 20 per cent of male victims had been subjected to violence more than 50 times, while a further fifth had suffered more than 20 times.

Even though the number of refuges for women victims at 7,500 are inadequate, they dwarf the 70 beds dedicated to male victims. In Berkshire, the local Women’s Aid is now helping 100 men a year. Most are victims of abuse from a female partner, but some suffer at the hands of male partners, including one, identified as Dan, who spoke publicly earlier this year. He was raped and assaulted repeatedly during a 10-year nightmare.

Night after night, Dan feared the tread of his partner on the stairs: “I knew the sound of his footsteps on the stairs, I knew how many steps it would take to get to the bedroom door before an attack would happen. That would then give me time to prepare myself – to cover my face, my body, put a big baggy dressing gown on so the blows don’t hurt that much.”

Without money, or family, Dan’s options were few, a fate shared by far greater numbers of women who suffer similar indignities nightly. “You go through a lot of different scenarios where you think ‘Right, I’m going to leave, I’m going to pack a bag’,” he told BBC Berkshire. “It’s not that straightforward. You have to have money, you have to have a place to go, you have to contact your work to take time off.

“I also do not have any family left, and when I did leave the relationship, he then followed me around,” he went on. Finally Dan went to Women’s Aid for a safe night’s sleep after his partner had tied him to a bed with belts and raped him. “I knew that one day I just wouldn’t wake up with the injuries I’d sustained.”