ABOUT

Confined to her home, it took Mary three decades of relentless marital abuse - violence, humiliation, isolation and control - before she finally broke cover and rang Bosnian police.

Officers dismissed her story as trivial.

"One policeman even told me: 'So what, I also slap my wife sometimes,'" said Mary, from the safety of a shelter for women and children in the central Bosnian city of Zenica.

Mary had been locked indoors and slapped around for years, pelted with beer bottles, drinking glasses and even forced to stand on one leg to amuse her husband's drinking buddies.

Contact with the outside world was strictly forbidden so the call she made for help in 2011 was a bold breach of rules.

"He used to forbid me to go out," recalled the 56-year-old, who declined to give her real name.

"I would run away, I would hide... I hid everywhere... At my neighbours' houses, in their basements...

"Horrible things followed."

Almost one in two Bosnian women have experienced some form of violence, mostly at the hands of their own partners, according to a 2013 United Nations-backed survey.

Yet only about 5 percent of those seek help, the study said.

"Most families think that everything that happens inside the family needs to stay in the family," said Sabiha Husic, the head of Medica Zenica, the women's rights group running the shelter.

Some officers even advise victims to give their partners a second chance, ranking family unity above safety, said Husic.

Almost one in three women around the world experience physical or sexual violence at the hands of their partner, according to the United Nations.