The number of people being abused by their partners shot up by more than 30 percent last year.

And Police are now hoping to set up a special unit to tackle the growing problem of domestic violence.

More than 400 incidents of domestic violence were reported to the Women's Resource Centre in 1997 compared to 285 the year before.

Although the majority of cases involved women being abused by their partners, the centre has dealt with about 20 cases of men being abused by women.

But Women's Resource Centre executive director Jo-Ann Curnow believes the rise is due to the fact that victims are now more willing to report abuse rather than suffer in silence.

And she also said that new legislation giving victims more protection also encouraged people to come forward.

"There's less of a stigma attached to it now,'' she said.

"Although we haven't compiled the statistics yet we will probably see in excess of 400 clients this year.

"With the new domestic violence legislation we are having more people come forward with protection orders. It's on the legal side that we are seeing the greater number of increases.

"It used to be that only people who were married or living together were eligible for protection orders but now it's for any significant relationship.'' If a protection order is granted by the courts then the alleged abuser is not allowed any contact with their accuser and are banned from entering their property.

"Because people are aware that there's more protection for them they are more prepared to come forward,'' Ms Curnow said.

"The figures deal with both physical abuse and emotional abuse and what's encouraging is that, if trends continue, more people are coming to us with problems of emotional abuse. That normally precedes physical abuse which is good because it shows people are getting out of their situation early on.

"The police have been doing a good job as well in promising to follow up with protection orders so we get a lot of referrals from them.

"Although we won't have the statistics compiled until next month we also expect to see that about five percent of cases we dealt with this year were from men. That's about the same as last year.'' Chief Inspector Gertrude Barker, head of the Police community relations department said: "Domestic violence has traditionally always been difficult for the Police to handle because of the explosive situation.

"A dispute could be going on but when the Police get there it's all calmed down.

"Basically we are working very closely with family services and we are in the process of trying to put a paper to the Cabinet in relation to domestic violence intervention which would see Police officers and social workers working on referrals. We need to get a domestic violence team in place although it's a matter of getting the funding.

"But it's not something the Police can do as one agency. The Police have to be educated in the new law and that's what we are doing at the moment -- that will bring us up to speed and make the job easier.'' CRIME CRM