Police called to four Mid Ulster homes a day to deal with domestic violence

And the problem, they said does not go away over the festive - but gets worse.

“The PSNI respond to one incident of domestic abuse every 19 minutes, this is a frightening statistic,” said Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton.

“However, we still believe that a large number of domestic incidents are unreported.”

A new poster campaign, however, has been launched in the run up to Christmas, telling sufferers ‘domestic abuse is wrong, pick up the phone and make it stop’.

In Mid Ulster the total number of recorded incidents of domestic violence between October 2013 and September this year was 1,474, down 8 per cent from 1,613 the previous year - but still 5.2% of the total 27,931 cases reported in Northern Ireland.

And whilst this is an improvement in the area as a whole, Magherafelt goes against the grain with the number of cases reported to police in that district in fact increasing almost 5% from 434 to 455.

In Cookstown police attended homes 393 times to help victims of domestic violence over the last year, and in Dungannon a massive 626 cases were alerted to officers.

Dungannon and Cookstown Districts come under the jurisdiction of F District police, and although domestic violence incidents have gone down there - what’s more shocking is that incidents in those areas make up 39% of the total number dealt with by police who also oversee Omagh and Fermanagh.

Whilst Magherafelt makes up 11.5% of all the domestic violence cases policed in G District.

“Domestic Abuse is a frightening crime which can affect anyone, both women and men,” added CC Mark Hamilton.

“Very often victims are isolated. No one should have to endure abuse and I want to encourage all victims of domestic abuse to come forward and report the matter to the police.”