A report into domestic abuse in rural areas has found that abuse lasts on average 25 per cent longer in rural areas.

The UK-wide report compiled by the National Rural Crime Network (NRCN), which had been a year in the making, has for the first time given a comprehensive examination of the impact of rurality on domestic abuse victims and services, the commonalities and differences between rural and urban experiences.

The report also finds rural victims are half as likely to report their abuse to others, there is a lack of readily accessible support services, victims live in a society that defacto protects the perpetrators and rural victims are isolated, unsupported and unprotected in a “rural hell” which is purposefully “normalised”.

The Domestic Abuse in Rural Areas report said exiting abuse is harder, takes longer and is more complex as there are significant additional in rural communities compared to urban areas such as the difficulties with starting a new life and the accessibility of service are much harder to obtain which make reporting abuse half as likely.

It is shocking that in 2013 more than two women each week are killed by their current or ex-partners, and one in four women in the UK will experience domestic violence in their lifetime.  This article presents the findings of a study by the charity ‘Women’s Aid’  which found on one day in 2013, 155 women and 103 children were turned away from refuges in England. While Ministers argue that £40 million has been ring fenced to fund ‘specialist support services and national help lines’, the charity suggests cuts to local authority budgets have depleted the help available at a time when demand is increasing. Women’s Aid chief executive Polly Neate describes how “Specialist gender-specific domestic violence services are reaching a breaking point. It is also worth noting that approximately 2 out of every 5 victims of domestic violence are men, challenging the mainstream impression that it is always women that are left battered and bruised – with some men assaulted by their partners reporting not being given enough support by the police.