Supporting Male Victims Does Not Require Us to Disbelieve Women

Men can be victims of domestic abuse.

Women are disproportionately affected by it.

Courts and professionals can make mistakes.

Protective orders can save lives.

Those statements can all be true at once.

We do not make justice fairer by forcing victims into competing camps. Nor do we improve due process by replacing evidence with a pre-set belief that one sex tells the truth and the other does not.

The proper dividing line is not men against women.

It is evidence against assumption. Safety against minimisation. Accountability against abuse.

Two truths can exist at the same time

The latest Office for National Statistics figures for the year ending March 2025 estimate that 2.2 million females and 1.5 million males aged 16 and over experienced domestic abuse in the previous year. That represented an estimated 9.1% of females and 6.5% of males.

Police data supplied by 32 forces showed that 72.1% of victims of police-recorded domestic abuse-related crimes were female. The ONS also reported that 69.6% of domestic-homicide victims were female across the combined period from the year ending March 2022 to the year ending March 2024.

The figures tell us two things.

First, male victimisation is not marginal. An estimate of 1.5 million male victims is not a footnote. It represents a vast number of individuals whose safety, dignity and access to specialist support matter.

Second, domestic abuse remains gendered at population level. Women experience higher prevalence overall and remain disproportionately represented among recorded victims and domestic-homicide victims.

A gendered analysis is not a shortcut for deciding an individual case. It does not mean every victim is a woman, every perpetrator is a man, or an allegation should be accepted or rejected because of somebody’s sex.

It means that policy, training and services should be honest about population patterns while every individual receives an evidence-led response.

Male victims need credible advocacy

Men can be stalked, strangled, assaulted, raped, humiliated, isolated, monitored, financially controlled and frightened inside their own homes. They can face post-separation abuse and the use of children, money, threats or proceedings as methods of continued control.

Some male victims fear that nobody will believe them. Some fear being stereotyped as the perpetrator. Some feel shame because abuse conflicts with damaging expectations about masculinity. Gay, bisexual and trans men may face additional barriers. Disabled, older, migrant and minoritised victims may encounter still more.

The Government’s explanatory note on men and boys expressly recognises male victims in their own right and the need to address stigma, stereotyping and gaps in support.

That work is necessary.

But advocacy is strongest when it is accurate. The case for supporting male victims does not depend on denying the evidence about violence against women. Male victims deserve services because they are victims—not because women must first be recast as routine liars.

Where the conversation takes a dangerous turn

The discussion changes when support for male victims becomes a broader claim that:

• women commonly invent abuse to gain an advantage in child-arrangements proceedings;
• protective injunctions are primarily tactical weapons;
• domestic-abuse systems exist to punish fathers; or
• a parent who raises safeguarding concerns should be viewed first through a lens of manipulation or “parental alienation”.

Those are not neutral starting points. They are assumptions.

Yes, a person of any sex can lie. A legal process can be misused. An order can be wrongly made. A professional can misunderstand evidence. A court can reach the wrong conclusion.

Those possibilities justify careful evidence, fair hearings, clear reasons and effective routes to challenge decisions. They do not justify treating an entire class of alleged victims as presumptively unreliable.

Nor should one person’s unjust experience be used to erase another person’s danger.

Due process and victim safety are not opposites

There is sometimes an unhelpful suggestion that a person must choose between believing victims and supporting due process.

That is another false choice.

Due process requires allegations to be identified clearly, evidence to be tested fairly, each party to have a proper opportunity to present their case, and judicial decisions to be reasoned and proportionate.

Safeguarding requires the system to recognise that delay, unwanted contact or disclosure of information can expose a victim or child to further harm.

Good procedure must do both.

What about a non-molestation order made without notice?

Section 45 of the Family Law Act 1996 permits the Family Court, where it considers it just and convenient, to make a non-molestation or occupation order even though the respondent has not first received the notice normally required.

That power exists because advance warning can sometimes increase danger, trigger retaliation or defeat the protection being sought.

But a without-notice order is not the same thing as a final determination of every disputed allegation. The respondent must be told what the order requires and has a route to respond, seek variation or discharge, and be heard by the court. The application still requires evidence and judicial scrutiny.

The President of the Family Division’s 2026 guidance on non-molestation orders, together with the Family Justice Council’s best-practice guidance and model witness statement, is intended to improve the quality, consistency and procedural handling of these applications. It also introduced a response form for respondents.

“Not proved”, “false” and “malicious” are not interchangeable

This distinction matters enormously in family proceedings.

Where a court decides a disputed factual allegation, the person making it ordinarily carries the burden of proving it on the civil standard—the balance of probabilities.

If the allegation is not proved, the court has decided that the evidential burden was not met. That is not automatically a positive finding that the allegation was invented.

An allegation may also remain judicially undetermined. A fact-finding hearing may be considered unnecessary or disproportionate because the issue would not affect the welfare decision, sufficient admissions already exist, or another evidential basis enables the case to proceed. A case may settle. An application may be withdrawn. None of those outcomes should casually be translated into “the court found it was a lie”.

A finding that an allegation was knowingly fabricated is different again. So is a finding that it was made maliciously for a particular purpose. Both require evidence, not rhetoric.

Knowingly false evidence is serious. It can damage children, wrongly restrict relationships, consume court time and destroy credibility. It should be addressed firmly when proved.

But fairness is not achieved by labelling every unsuccessful, untested or imperfectly evidenced allegation “false”.

JSH Law’s practical guide, False Allegations in the Family Court, explains how a litigant in person can respond calmly and evidentially without making premature claims about motive.

What the family-court framework in England and Wales requires

The law is gender-neutral at the level of the individual case. Sections 1 and 2 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 cover abusive behaviour between personally connected people, including physical or sexual abuse, violent or threatening behaviour, controlling or coercive behaviour, economic abuse and psychological, emotional or other abuse.

Under section 3, a child who sees, hears or experiences the effects of domestic abuse and is related to either party is recognised as a victim in their own right.

In private-law children proceedings, Practice Direction 12J requires the court to identify relevant domestic-abuse issues at the earliest opportunity and decide whether disputed allegations require a fact-finding hearing.

PD12J does not instruct the court to accept every allegation automatically. Nor does it permit the court to ignore risk until there has been a criminal conviction.

It requires a structured welfare and risk analysis. Among other things:

• a fact-finding hearing should be considered where necessary to provide a factual basis for welfare and risk decisions;
• the necessity and proportionality of such a hearing must be assessed;
• while material allegations remain undetermined, interim child arrangements should not be made unless they are in the child’s interests and do not expose the child or other parent to an unmanageable risk of harm;
• where domestic abuse is established, contact should be ordered only where it is safe and beneficial for the child; and
• the court’s reasons should explain how its findings about domestic abuse affected the child-arrangements decision.

In Re H-N and Others (Children) (Domestic Abuse: Finding of Fact Hearings) [2021] EWCA Civ 448, the Court of Appeal emphasised the need to understand patterns of coercive and controlling behaviour and cautioned against allowing an incident-focused schedule to distort the analysis.

That is the correct approach.

Evidence-led.

Pattern-aware.

Fair to both parties.

Centred on the child’s welfare rather than adult slogans.

Domestic abuse is not a peripheral issue in private-law cases

The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s 2025 report, Everyday Business, examined a 2024 pilot at three court sites. Domestic abuse was raised by a party or professional in 87% of the closed files reviewed and 73% of observed cases.

Those figures come from a defined pilot and should not be presented as a national prevalence estimate. But they illustrate why domestic-abuse competence cannot be treated as a niche skill within family justice.

The system needs professionals who can recognise abuse without pre-judging it, test evidence without minimising it, and protect children without substituting labels for analysis.

Domestic abuse and allegations of alienating behaviour

This is one of the areas where the narrative identified by Eric Threlkeld can become especially dangerous.

A child may resist or refuse time with a parent for many reasons. Those reasons can include fear, trauma, exposure to abuse, the parent’s own behaviour, ordinary relationship difficulties, alignment within a separated family, developmental needs—or psychological manipulation by another adult.

The label does not decide the cause.

The Family Justice Council’s guidance on a child’s reluctance, resistance or refusal and allegations of alienating behaviour requires three elements before alienating behaviour can be found:

1. the child is reluctant, resisting or refusing to engage in a relationship with a parent or carer;
2. that response is not a consequence of the actions of that parent towards the child or the other parent—what the guidance calls an appropriate justified rejection—and is not explained by another factor such as the child’s alignment, affinity or attachment; and
3. the other parent has engaged in behaviour which has directly or indirectly caused the child’s response.

The parent alleging alienating behaviour carries the burden of proving the harmful behaviour and the causal link. The guidance also says the court’s deliberations should begin with domestic abuse and examine allegations of alienating behaviour through that prism.

Crucially, even failed or false allegations of domestic abuse do not, without more, establish alienating behaviour. There must be evidence that the child was manipulated on the basis of those allegations into an unjustified reluctance, resistance or refusal.

That is careful legal analysis.

It protects children from genuine manipulation. It also protects children and protective parents from having fear or trauma too quickly relabelled as “alienation”.

For more on this distinction, see JSH Law’s guide to parental alienation, alienating behaviour and contact breakdown.

What an evidence-first system should look like

A safe and fair family-justice response should:

1. Take every alleged victim seriously, whatever their sex or identity. Serious consideration is not the same as automatic acceptance; it means listening, recording and assessing properly.
2. Separate allegation, evidence, admission and finding. Those words describe different procedural and evidential stages and should never be collapsed into one another.
3. Look for pattern, context, power and impact. A single message or incident may be ambiguous. A chronology may reveal coercive control—or demonstrate that the alleged pattern is not supported.
4. Test competing explanations. Protective behaviour, trauma, ordinary conflict, poor communication, manipulation and deliberate obstruction may look similar when stripped of context.
5. Keep the child visible. The question is not which adult narrative is rhetorically strongest. It is what the child has experienced, what risk remains and which arrangements promote welfare safely.
6. Use proportionate protection and proportionate scrutiny. Urgent measures may be necessary, but restrictions must be clear, justified and capable of review.
7. Record reasons accurately. Parties, Cafcass and future courts need to know what was admitted, what was proved, what was not proved and what was never determined.
8. Provide genuinely inclusive services. Specialist services for women and girls and properly resourced services for male and LGBT+ victims are complementary, not contradictory.

Practical points for litigants in person

Domestic-abuse cases are emotionally charged. The most effective court material is usually calm, precise and connected to the decision the court must make.

For either party, it may be appropriate to ask the court to identify the key factual and welfare issues, record whether PD12J applies, decide whether a fact-finding hearing is necessary, give focused disclosure directions, consider participation measures and state clearly what findings or admissions are being carried forward.

JSH Law’s related article, When Abuse Doesn’t End: Coercive Control and the Family Court, explains why pattern-based evidence must be organised rather than left scattered across hundreds of messages and screenshots.

Final thought

Believing that male victims matter does not require disbelief of women.

Recognising violence against women as gendered does not make male victims invisible.

Supporting urgent protection does not require abandoning due process.

Insisting on due process does not require minimising danger.

The family court should not begin with “men lie” or “women lie”. It should begin with the evidence, the legal framework, the pattern, the risk and the child.

That is not anti-men.

It is not anti-women.

It is anti-abuse—and pro-justice.