Six women and a man have been killed in Northern Ireland by their partners during the last year, it emerged today.
As Ballymena man Paul McClarnon began a jail sentence for slashing and scarring his former partner for life, police and support agencies warned that far too many victims of domestic violence stay silent.
Even though the British government is finalising a new strategy to halt attacks which account for a third of all violent crime, case levels are continuing to rise.
Men have also been increasingly subjected to beatings, humiliation and even sexual abuse by wives and girlfriends, counselling services confirmed.
Maxine McCutcheon, Co-ordinator for the Men's Advisory Project in Belfast, said: "There's a lot of shame involved. It's not something that fits with the stereotype of what a man is perceived to be." Latest police records show 17 per cent of reported cases involved male victims, compared with 14 per cent in 2003/04.
But in the overwhelming majority of violent relationships, men remain the aggressors.
Inspector Robin Dempsey, a Community Safety Branch officer specialising in domestic assaults, disclosed the annual death toll has not been higher in the last five years.
He confirmed that six women and a man have died in the last 12 months, three of them inside 10 days during January.
New Police Service of Northern Ireland figures will be published later this month, with Mr Dempsey disclosing the number of offences has surged by more than 1,000 since 2001.
"It's an absolute tragedy that there have been seven domestic murders or killings," he said. "You have to ask yourself could some of those have been avoided."