Men in their early 20s are just as likely to be abused by their partners as women, according to the latest government figures seen by Newsbeat.

6.4% of men in England and Wales between the ages of 20 and 24 say they were victims the last year, compared with 5.4% of women. The official definition of partner abuse includes forms like emotional bullying. It also means more serious like threats and severe force.

'Women more likely'
Overall women are more to be abused in general and to be the victims of stronger physical violence. Across all age ranges, one four women have been abused compared with one in six men. But analysis of the figures from the Home Office shows the problem is more spread between the sexes in the early stages of a young relationship. Mark Brooks from the men's health charity Mankind the issue of male domestic abuse is often ignored by the government, social services and the police.

"In the UK as a there are 500 refuges for female victims and that is probably not enough," he told Newsbeat. "There are only 12 for male victims. Overall services for men are 35 years behind those for women and that's simply not good enough." Women are still more likely to be repeatedly abused in the home than men and to be physically harmed. The latest Home Office figures for 2007/8 show 2.2% of women of any age said their partner used minor or severe force against them over the last year. The figure for men was slightly at 2.0%.

Have you been the victim of male domestic abuse?

Kevin Edgar from Masa, which operates a helpline for abused men, says blokes can be slow to come forward and recognise the problem. "Often there are children and they don't want to leave them with a violent partner. They do feel a of shame in what's happened even though that's illogical. "More and more men will come forward when they realise they are not the only being abused."

Scotland and Northern Ireland
In Northern Ireland 8% of men said they had experienced domestic violence in 2007/8 compared with 15% of women. The figures for the region show more 16 to 29-year-olds said they are victims than 30 to 59-year-olds. Estimating the level of male domestic abuse in Scotland is more difficult as statistics are obtained from police reports of an anonymous survey. Official figures from the Scottish government show a 2% in overall domestic abuse in 2007/8.

12% of all recorded incidents involved a male victim and female perpetrator up from 8% in 2000/1 campaigners say that figure the scale of the problem as men are likely to file an official police report than women.
---
2 comments on this article:
Sometimes, when people fail to accept their own mistakes, they tend to attack others in different ways, to minimize their poorest weaknesses. This article is a clear example of it. By making this kind of comparison the author of this piece of writing is showing us another form of violence against women: the misleading use of figures. There have been, and there are, an overwhelming amount of suffering women, a great many of whom have never reported mistreatments -- both physical and non-physical -- while there have been some cases of men reporting being abused by women. Most of these, I’d dare to say, are the consequence of the growing violent environment we are living in and have nothing to do with gender violence, as the article attempts to show, because gender violence means men being allowed to establish their superiority over women in order to dominate these and get whatever from them regardless their feelings or thoughts.
I totally agree with you. It is unintelligent and insensitive to base one’s defense of an abused group on “denouncing” that a different group of abused people is managing to get some attention as a consequence of their hard work. We should always try to fight abuses on people by using our intelligence, not by ill-focused comparisons.