DORSET Police deal with an incident of domestic violence every hour of the day.

Officers receive on average 700 reports of domestic abuse per month across the county and have dealt with more than 36,000 incidents of domestic violence in the last five years.

Around one in four women and 38 per cent of men will become a victim of domestic abuse within their lifetime and across the UK, two women a week and one man every 17 days are killed by their current or former partner.

Today, we speak to one of the services that helps victims of domestic abuse.

CHRISTMAS can be one of the scariest and loneliest times of the year for domestic abuse sufferers.

During the festive season, Dorset Police receive a surge in reports of domestic abuse across the county, so much so that they have been forced to bring in extra specially-trained officers to deal with the crimes.

Whether it is because the turkey wasn’t cooked right, the decorations were not perfect or because too much alcohol was consumed, more and more reports of domestic violence are reported each year.

Now, Jo Keane and Pauline Collier, who run the Domestic Abuse Intervention Training (DAIT), in south and west Dorset, are urging victims to report incidents of violence and emotional abuse to police immediately if they occur over Christmas.

Ms Keane and Ms Collier have more than 20 years experience working in domestic abuse support, and currently host two courses called Freedom and Pattern Changing aimed at helping women recover from the physical and emotional scars inflicted by abusers, with the pair hoping to launch a specialist service for men in 2015.

Ms Collier said: “We are not here to tell people what to do, we are here to give them the information about what is happening to them, what they can do about it and how they can change it.

“It has got to be their choice whether they say “enough is enough” or whether they decide to stay in that relationship. The courses give you the chance, the confidence, to make a choice.”

Freedom is a 12-week course with weekly sessions and allows people who are either currently in an abusive relationship or have just left one to consider what happened to them and help them identify what abusive behaviour is.

Pattern Changing is a 14-week course developed to help victims who are not currently in an abusive relationship to rebuild their confidence and self-esteem, and to reinstate personal boundaries.

Both Ms Keane and Ms Collier are keen to emphasise domestic abuse is not just a physical act of violence. It also includes psychological abuse, sexual abuse, bullying, harassment and control, and men can also be the victim of such abuse.

Ms Keane said: “Often, perpetrators of abuse will use threatening, intimidating behaviour just to enforce their control. They might never hit the other person, but they do it to enforce their control over them.”

Ms Keane added that the courses were an invaluable support network to victims.

She said: “To walk away from an abusive relationship takes a lot of guts and courage.

“One of the things that follows leaving an abusive relationship is the victim often feels a sense of guilt, that they shouldn’t have left, and that comes from what the perpetrator told them.

“The victims must remember it is not their fault, but until they can believe it themselves that they can do it, they won’t leave.

“We offer support to them, whether they are just about to leave or have just left, and we can help identify what abusive behaviour they have subjected to.”

Ms Collier encouraged victims, both men and women, to contact DAIT.