Thirty years ago Erin Pizzey opened the first refuge for battered women and their children in Chiswick, London. The move caught the attention of the public and the media, especially when her book, Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear, was published.
She opened our eyes to something we didn't know was going on. In the previous decade our eyes had been opened to baby-battering and in the following decade they would be opened to child sexual abuse.
Now Erin Pizzey was telling us about the terrible things that went on behind closed doors. She appeared on television and radio, she was interviewed in the newspapers and she became a bit of a guru. Her work led to the establishment of other refuges, including one set up by the fledgling Women's Aid in Harcourt Terrace, Dublin, in the 1970s.
Then, about 10 years after she set up the Chiswick refuge, she seemed to go off the rails. She began to suggest that women could be prone to violent behaviour. Some women were shocked to find themselves in violent relationships and wanted to escape. But others were violent themselves or were drawn to relationships which were violent.
She did not suggest that this latter group was deriving any satisfaction from violence. "A violence-prone person is the unwilling victim of his or her own violence," she said. But she had gone too far. So strong was the belief in women as victims and men as perpetrators that her "adjustment" of this belief was too much to take.
By and large, the media stopped seeking her views on domestic violence. Her name is rarely if ever invoked by groups combating domestic violence. It is likely that today only readers of a certain age recognise her name or know why they recognise it.
In the 1990s people like Mary Cleary of Amen began to declare that men were victims of sickening violence, too, from their female partners. Journalist John Waters began to put forward the idea in The Irish Times that not all women were angels and not all men devils.
He drew inspiration from the work of Parental Equality which originated in the distress of men denied reasonable access to their children.
While the views of all three were making a little bit of headway, it seems fair to say they were marginalised. Certainly Waters's regular return to the subject drew groans from politically correct people like myself. Well, they are not marginalised any more.
Last week's report from the Marriage and Relationship Counselling Service has changed our view of the whole social landscape. The report, by a team led by Dr Kieran McKeown, covered many aspects of relationship breakdown among the MRCS's largely middle-class clientele.
But the one that jumped out at readers was the section dealing with domestic violence. In those who come for counselling to the MRCS, about half are in relationships in which domestic violence occurs. One-third of the violence is perpetrated by partners on each other; 41 per cent is perpetrated by women on men. A quarter (26 per cent) is perpetrated by men on women.
"Women are more likely than men to be the perpetrators of domestic violence" among MRCS clients, the report said.
So startling was all this that it seemed necessary to point out that Kieran McKeown's credentials as a social researcher are mightily impressive. He has worked for everyone from the European Commission to innumerable voluntary bodies. It also seemed necessary to point out that the MRCS is a highly regarded body, the oldest relationship counselling service in Ireland.
When it started in the 1960s, it was largely promoted by members of the Church of Ireland. Nevertheless, it got a cold welcome from some of those in authority in that church. They were unimpressed with its contention that many marriages were in difficulty and needed help.
In other words MRCS - now non-denominational - is no stranger to the business of pointing out that things are not as they seem to be. This research is likely to change profoundly the way we view the social setting in which we live.
We will see domestic violence, not as an issue of men attacking women but of violent people of either gender attacking their partners. Victims of both genders will have to be considered by the law and by voluntary and statutory services.
When a child in the care of a man and woman is assaulted again and again we can no longer assume that the woman should, in every case, walk free. We will, at the very least, have to ask different questions about what went on.
And in cases concerning access to children, surely we must now take a complete new look at whether men are treated fairly. When the ground begins to shake it often means that an earthquake is under way. The ground has begun to shake.
pomorain@irish-times.ie
The Amen website at www.amen.ie contains a number of Erin Pizzey's articles