Two women in England and Wales will be killed this week by their current or former partners, while in the time it takes you to read this article, ten calls reporting domestic violence will have been made to police across the UK.
Those desperate pleas for help represent just a fraction of the problem.
According to the national domestic violence charity Refuge, on average a woman is beaten 35 times before her first call to the police.
The statistics describing domestic violence in the UK make chilling reading: one woman in nine is severely beaten by her male partner each year. In 35 per cent of households where a first assault has occurred, the second will occur within five weeks and the violence usually escalates in severity and frequency over time to about two attacks per woman, per week.
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