‘I was held at knifepoint suddenly’: Man shares his alleged intimate partner violence experience

A Windsor man is sharing his alleged experience with intimate partner violence, calling for more support for male victims.

Warning: This story contains graphic content that may be disturbing to readers.

Kent Burge claims it all started on the day of his wedding.

“She [my wife] hit me,” said Burge. “It wasn’t hard, but it surprised me. It shocked me.”

“I just chalked it up to nervousness and stress, a big event, big decisions, big responsibility.”

However, Burge said it didn’t stop there.

“It got to the point where I was held at knifepoint suddenly and I looked deeply in her eyes,” he said. “We couldn’t have been any more than a foot away from each other. There was a blackness to her eyes that I had not seen before.”

“There was this emotional, psychological and physical shift in her approach to me that involved grabbing a knife off the kitchen counter and then actually holding the knife to my chest.”

It took a long time for him to take action, until he said she threatened him.

“I would have continued to sustain the abuse, the violence, the hitting, the devalue, showing the lack of integrity and the lying,” he said. “Except for one thing. It was that she threatened me. The actual statement was, ‘it’s a good day to die. Let’s both die’.”

After that statement, Burge made the decision to call the police.

“The history had demonstrated that there’s a strong likelihood that she will fulfill the statement she had made to me,” he added.

Windsor police told CTV News since the beginning of 2024, there have been 478 male complainants to police. The victims were identified as men in 151 of those reports.

Burge claimed his wife faced four counts of uttering death threats, assault and unlawful confinement. He continued that she ended up allegedly getting charged with one count with a six-month suspended sentence on probation and with anger management classes.

None of these charges have been confirmed by Windsor police.

Despite not seeing his wife in a year and a half, Burge is still married to her.

He wants to raise awareness for other men experiencing abuse.

“Do not hit your partner,” he said. “Do not ever hit your partner. Call for help. Men who experience domestic violence will go through a period of mental collapse, where they’re not comprehending everything. It’s called cognitive dissonance.”

“When you call the police, know they are there to help you. The police steered me through a maze of psychological dysfunction, trying to combat what I had experienced.”

Burge said he called psychologists and psychiatrists in Texas, New York, California, Toronto and had no luck finding help for men.

Now, he’s asking for more help for men experiencing intimate partner violence.

“You can’t put a bandage on something and say, ‘oh look. We’ve fixed it.’ You have to look at the root cause and that’s exactly what I was trying to do,” he said.

“But in the process of doing that, what I’ve found out is that there’s really nothing for men.”

If you are looking for help, the Ontario Male Survivors’ Line can be called at 1-866-877-0015.