I am delighted to read of the establishment of the Intimidated Witness Support Service (IWSS) at Brighton police station to combat the evil of Domestic violence (Argus, March 7).

Nevertheless, I feel I must put in plea for a more fair-minded discussion of the issue. A Mori survey for the BBC's Here And Now in 1994 found that "men are more likely to be the victims of domestic violence than women".

A Channel 4 Dispatches programme, Battered Men, about 12 months ago, revealed more of the issue. The facts are well documented in Philip Cook's Abused Men (1997).

Domestic violence and abuse is a human problem, not a gender problem, and the evidence is that the honours are pretty much evenly divided.

How hurtful, then, for a man who has suffered at the hands of his wife or partner, or a homosexual man or woman who has similarly suffered, to read yet again of domestic violence defined as a crime perpetrated by men upon women. Where do they go for assistance?

They would be most unlikely to turn to the refuge hotline printed in your article or to the IWSS at Brighton police station, where all those quoted would seem to believe domestic violence is by definition, like rape, committed only be men.

Neither old-fashioned patriarchal attitudes nor a certain twisted form of feminism can conceive of women as perpetrators or men as victims and so we have a sort of wilful blindness to the reality.

I might additionally remark that in an enlightened age one would hope to see a more therapeutic and less punitive approach to offenders. After all, they have the problem.

-Oliver Simpson, Rowlands Road, Worthing