Up to one-fifth of women attending pre-marriage courses have experienced "low-grade violence" from their future husbands, according to the Cork Domestic Violence Project.
The figure has emerged from research conducted at Diocesan pre-marriage courses in Cork, Mr Colm O'Connor, who works with the project, said. He was speaking to The Irish Times at a joint conference in Dublin with Women's Aid, entitled "Working With Violent Men".
While the violence emerging at pre-marriage courses is of low intensity, it goes on to become worse in later years, he said. The project works with men in groups in a process that can go on for a year, he said.
It always takes a crisis - a barring order or the imminent loss of the family - to bring men into a treatment programme. The project takes a very assertive approach from the very beginning, he said. It does not accept excuses that men hit women because of stress, drink or family pressures.
Men hit women because it gets them the power they want, because they can get away with it and because the gains outweigh the losses, he said.
About 70 men have completed the course in the past four years and in 80 per cent of cases their wives say they feel safer as a result, said Mr O'Connor.
The Minister of State for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Ms Mary Wallace, urged women victims to seek help from Women's Aid and the Federation of Refuges. A woman can become isolated by not visiting friends, family or neighbours in the fear they will find out about the predicament she is in, she said.