194 men were assaulted by their partners in six months – Lagos DSVRT

The Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT) on Wednesday said that 194 men were assaulted by their partners in the past six months.

The figure was reported in DSVRT’s latest bi-annual report. The report also covers the timespan of January to June 2021.

The six months figure represented an uptick in assault cases among men over last year’s report. In 2020, over the same period, there were 108 cases of assault reported.

According to DSVRT, it attended to 1,329 cases involving adults from January to June in the latest report. Eighty-five per cent of the reports were female victims, with male victims taking the remaining portion.

The data revealed that 77 per cent of the adults were married, 11 per cent single, seven per cent widowed and divorced, while five per cent were cohabiting.

The DSVRT Coordinator, Titilola Vivour-Adeniyi, told NAN that there had been a steady increase in reported cases of gender-based violence on the part of both men and women in the state since 2014.

Vivour-Adeniyi said that men had more difficulty reporting incidents of assault due to cultural norms.

She said, “patriarchy is an enemy of everybody because it keeps people in silence. From a young age, males are not allowed to express themselves when they are experiencing trauma, and that lingers on to adulthood. When a man is experiencing violence, even his fellow men mock him, and such a person will not be able to speak up.

“With the data we are seeing, we are confident that when men are aware, they can report these incidents. They will be treated with empathy and professionalism, and they can be encouraged to speak up and report.”

The DSVRT report revealed that, of the 1,329 adults, 1,236 were aged between 18 years and 45 years, while 93 were 45 years and above.