Artist starts campaign to encourage men in abusive relationships to speak up

A Middle Eastern artist has begun a bold campaign that’s sure to catch the eyes of many.

Artist Saint Hoax is bringing awareness to abusive relationships, but he’s focusing on those where men are the victims — and he’s using classic Disney animated characters to make his point.

The campaign is called “Prince Charmless,” and the artist last week began posting his newly created images on Twitter and Facebook.

On Twitter, Saint Hoax describes himself as a “POPlitically incorrect artist, creating beautiful visual lies that tell an ugly truth.”

The Huffington Post says a 2000 study by the U.S. Department of Justice found that 7.7 percent of men reported being raped, physically assaulted or stalked by their female partner.

“We continuously see campaigns about abused women but rarely encounter any campaign that targets male victims of domestic violence,” Saint Hoax (a pseudonym used by the artist behind the project) told The Huffington Post. “I only knew these statistics about abused men last month after doing an intensive research around the subject. The information wasn’t out there; I had to dig for it.”

The “Prince Charmless” campaign follows one the artist started last month that focused on the female victims of domestic violence. That campaign also used Disney characters was called “Happy Never After.”

To Saint Hoax, the projects weren’t intended to compare domestic violence by gender side-by-side, but rather focus on the challenges each issue faces.

“In my ‘Happy Never After’ series, the main objective of the posters was to tell victims that it’s not too late to put an end to domestic violence,” the artist explained to HuffPost. “While in the ‘Prince Charmless’ series, the main objective is for men not to be embarrassed to ask for help.”