We Need To Help Individual Victims Of Domestic Abuse, Whatever Their Gender

We must stop looking at domestic abuse as something that only happens to women, says Ian McNicholl, who knows first-hand how male victims are not taken seriously

By Ian McNicholl: I am going under the knife next month. After years of awaiting reconstructive surgery, and being rejected numerous times by the NHS Exceptional Treatment Panel, in July I am going to have some of the surgery that a number of medical professionals said I needed some time ago.

It will go a little way to mending the injuries that my partner Michelle inflicted upon me. But it will not erase the memory of being rescued seven years ago by Humberside Police, being taken to A&E to be stitched up and then being left in a homeless night shelter with no money or ID because the police and NHS did not know where to place me.
This was because Michelle had been bailed back to the house where we lived – a house that I owned – and the police felt, rightly, that it was not safe for me to return there. I then spent 18 months homeless, living in a Salvation Army hostel, a charity to which I will always be indebted, and was almost made bankrupt due to the debts Michelle ran up in my name.

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Why do I write this now?
Well, after reading an article earlier this month by Polly Neate, the chief executive of Women’s Aid ("Domestic abuse could not be further from gender neutral. Wake up Britain"), it would seem that because I am male, and solely because I am male, that it is absolutely right that I was not seen as a priority, that I had to fight for several years for the surgery I need, and that I was left wandering the streets with nowhere to go.
Ms Neate's comments came after Professor Sylvia Walby, professor of sociology and Unesco chair of gender research at Lancaster University, called on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to urgently examine the way it measures domestic abuse in the UK, because the number of times each person can be counted as a victim of crime is currently capped at five.
^{Ian McNicholl: 'domestic abuse is not a woman-versus-man issue'}
What was so upsetting about the article was that Ms Neate dressed domestic abuse up as a woman-versus-man issue, not a bad-person-versus-good-person issue – the latter being the reality at its most basic. To compound this, she then attempted to pit female victims against male victims both in terms of priority, but also in terms of available services (the services for male victims are proportionally small). All of this was underpinned with an argument based on ideology, not equality – as if the gender of victims is the overwhelming consideration, when the only consideration should be the individual's needs.
I understand the need to accurately count the number of incidents that someone endures as a domestic abuse victim, so further research in this area is always welcome. Albeit, the Office of National Statistics does recognise that eight per cent of men who had been victims of partner abuse in 2012/13 had endured six or more incidents that year, as did 13 per cent of female victims.
However, the issue around incidents should never mask nor override the need to look at individual cases. It only takes one blow to kill someone and I am sure that because I was rescued by the police having never reported my experiences to them before, I only counted as one "incident". The fact that a kettle of boiling water had been poured over me twice, and that on three occasions an iron was placed on me, were not reported, and nor were the dozens of other assaults I experienced. It's worth bearing in mind too that male victims of partner abuse are in many cases unlikely to go to the police at all, out of fear of not being taken seriously.

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My feeling is that the campaign to pressurise the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to prioritise the number of incidents over the number of people is being driven by a women-over-men ideology – by the need to recognise, in Polly Neate's words, that “domestic abuse is not a random event that can strike anyone, for no reason. It is both a consequence and a cause of women's inequality. It is linked to a culture that undermines, belittles and devalues women.”
It is anyone’s guess how this statement relates to what happened to me, the 500,000 men who the ONS say are victims of partner abuse every year or the women in same-sex relationships who are victims of such abuse. It might not suit the agenda of organisations such as Women's Aid, but let's remind ourselves that for well over a decade the ONS has shown that at least one in every three domestic abuse victims is male.
Next month, when I finally undergo surgery, I will take another step on the road to rebuilding my life. But the narrative which dismisses the male experience of partner abuse means that for men like me that road is often much longer than it needs to be. But then, I am a mere man, not a person, not a priority.

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