The number of men contacting Amen, the leading support service for male victims of domestic abuse has    increased by 80 per cent, according to its 2009 annual report.

The group, which operates a helpline and counselling service for men, said last week that 3,644 people had contacted their service last year, up from 2,028 in 2008.

According to the report, a quarter of clients (26 per cent) who suffered abuse from their partner were physically abused, with victims reporting being stabbed, burnt by cigarettes and having their hair pulled out.

More than one-third of people (35 per cent) suffered verbal abuse and 38 per cent suffered psychological abuse, according the report, which is Amen’s first.

Men are often attacked when they are most vulnerable, for example when they are asleep, says the report, which includes a quote from a victim of abuse called ‘Patrick’.

“I felt heavy blows to my head, still sleepy and dazed I partly woke up to see her standing over me with a wooden meat tenderizer which had a metal studded head on it. When she finished hitting me I saw a small steak knife in her hand. She stuck it in the thick duvet cover. I felt a sharp pain in my naval area,” said Patrick.

Typical forms of verbal or psychological abuse faced by men include: not allowing them to see family/friends; hiding their car keys, listening to their phone calls, accusing them of having affairs and publicly humiliating them, says the report.

Following Amen’s second annual awareness campaign highlighting the problem of domestic abuse suffered by men last year, there was a dramatic increase in the number of men looking to access its services, Niamh McGrath, manager of Amen, said.

“In 2009, Amen’s helpline received 2,124 calls and 115 one-to-one meetings were held with victims”, she continued.

Amen support staff accompanied men to court hearings on 37 occasions in 2009 and 65 new members joined the organisation’s group support meetings, she added. The vast majority of those who called the helpline, 96 per cent, were men.

Ms McGrath said funding was a constant problem for the group, which saw 1,274 unanswered calls to its helpline in 2009 because they were made after 5pm in the evening or at weekends when its phone line is unmanned. She said there was also a need for a male refuge to be set up in the Republic.

Almost half (43 per cent) of the clients who contacted Amen in 2009 were from the Dublin northeast region. However, the organisation has taken calls from all over the State.

Declan Keaveney, who was Amen’s first client back in the mid-1990s and is now a a board member of the support group, said one of the biggest challenges facing men suffering domestic abuse was for them to prove they were the victims and to ensure the children in a relationship were okay.

He said the legal system needed to be reorganised to ensure better protection of fathers’ rights.