If you are a male victim of family violence and/or abuse, you are not alone. No matter your background, location, income, age, profession, culture, race, ability, religion or sexuality, you deserve help.
One in eight men will experience violence from an intimate partner or family member in their lifetime.
You are not weak
You are not alone
BARRIERS TO DISCLOSING
Male victims of family violence and abuse – like women – often face many barriers to disclosing their abuse:
There are few services available to help male victims
They are likely to be told that there must be something they did to provoke the perpetrator’s abuse
They can suffer shame, embarrassment and the social stigma of not being able to protect themselves
They can fear that if they disclose the abuse there will be nowhere for them and their children to escape to
They can fear that if they disclose the abuse or end the relationship, their partner might become more abusive and/or take the children
They can feel uncertain about where to seek help, or how to seek help
Services are less likely to ask whether a man is a victim of family violence, and when they do ask, they are less likely to believe him. Many health and social services and members of the judiciary are trained to assume male victims are actually perpetrators, and many health departments have mandatory domestic violence screening for young women, but no such screening for young men.
Male victims can be falsely arrested and removed from their homes because of the assumption that because they are male, they must be a perpetrator and not a victim. When this happens, children can be left unprotected from the perpetrator of the violence, leading many men to suffer the abuse in silence in an attempt to protect their children.
Because of these barriers, men are much less likely to report being a victim of family violence than are women (and women also frequently don’t report violence against them). Many men do not believe or feel they are a victim until sometime after they no longer have control of their life and have become isolated.