An investigation by The Northern Echo has revealed that a much-heralded refuge for male victims of domestic violence does not exist. Reporter Neil Hunter posed as a victim to establish the truth.

CHOKING back tears, I pleaded with the man on the other end of the phone.

He promised he could help. He said he could find a place for me to stay the night, away from my abusive girlfriend.

After enduring nine months of mental and physical torture, I had made the biggest and bravest step I could, he told me, simply by picking up the phone and asking for help.

I had made contact with an organisation established to help male victims of domestic violence, by a man who claimed to know all about it. A sufferer himself.

In a series of e-mails and telephone calls, Mike Kenny, the founder of support group It Does Happen, assured me that I would receive help.

Last Friday, I made contact to say I had watched him on the TV news the previous night, talking about the country's first safe haven for battered men that he had set up in the North-East.

I said I was dreading the weekend as that is when things at home were usually the worst - not being able to escape for ten hours a day at work.

Asked for a mobile phone number, I refused on the grounds that my controlling partner monitored my calls and would fly into a rage if I took a secretive one.

E-mail contact was resumed on Monday when I was given a number to send text messages to, and I then felt more comfortable passing on my mobile number.

After several emotional phone calls - one of which lasted more than an hour as I recalled the trauma of having boiling pasta poured over me and being attacked with weapons - I was told a refuge was not the best place for me.

I was puzzled, disappointed, frightened, but Mr Kenny said the 31-bed safe house on Tyneside had just one place remaining, and it was a family room he had to keep available in case a father turned up with his children.

But I was given a "100 per cent promise" that I would be found a place in that refuge - said to have cost £2.4m and boasting comforts on a par with a travel hotel - or a sub-refuge in Derwentside, County Durham.

In the meantime, I was told I should gather personal papers and some clothes, flee my home in Hartlepool and make a 60-mile trip north to stay with my mother in Northumberland.

Mr Kenny pledged he would meet me in Newcastle the following day, and that I would be assessed and taken to the refuge by a "buddy" to see if it was suitable for me.

But on my way to Tyneside, I spoke to Mr Kenny and he told me he had been called to an emergency meeting and he was, in fact, in Middlesbrough.

I offered to drive to Teesside to meet him, but he convinced me I could receive just as much help at the end of a phone line as I could by seeing him.

After completing as assessment form over the phone, providing my National Insurance number and details of my doctor, it turned out I was not eligible for a place at any of the organisation's safe houses after all.

I did not score enough points: I had not lived at my current address for more than six months; I had no other relatives in the same district; I had not been in receipt of benefits; I had not reported any of the attacks to the police; and my GP was unaware of my problems.

After complaining that I was not getting what I'd been promised the previous evening, Mr Kenny repeatedly told me he was not letting me down.

He accused me of demanding the eviction of the father with his two children who had, by coincidence, arrived during the night. I had done nothing of the sort. He insisted he was doing all he could to help, and promised to make inquiries with my local council and explain my situation to an official there.

When I called him back, he said he had lined up a visit and I should go to the town hall, declare myself homeless and that I would be put into emergency accommodation.

His comforting words the previous evening, the hope he had given - "this time tomorrow you will be regaining your life" - now seemed hollow.

The thought of being alone in a bed and breakfast provided by the council when I had been hoping I would be surrounded by men with similar problems was not a nice one, I told him.

Mr Kenny did, however, offer to send over a "buddy" from the Sedgefield area to talk to me at the B and B, and put in place a support network.

He had been of help - emotionally and practically. Just having someone to talk to had meant a lot. Making arrangements with the council was one fewer thing for me to worry about.

But ultimately, any hope of finding sanctuary at the country's first shelter for male victims of domestic violence, was as fanciful as the refuge itself.