In the Dominican Republic, a groundbreaking new analysis from the Judiciary’s Gender Equality Commission has pulled back the curtain on the systemic and personal barriers that lead hundreds of thousands of gender-based violence survivors to abandon legal proceedings against their abusers each year. Led by Supreme Court Justice Nancy I. Salcedo Fernández, the research reviewed thousands of court rulings issued across a four-year window from 2020 to 2024, covering a wide spectrum of gender-based harm: domestic abuse, physical torture, brutal assault, and modern cyber-enabled violence, among other offenses.
The study’s most striking finding centers on the deep structural and psychological challenges that force victims to step back from active participation in their own cases. Researchers identified five core drivers that push survivors to withdraw from legal processes: crippling fear of retaliation from abusers, persistent emotional dependence on perpetrators, overwhelming pressure from family members to drop charges, clinical depression stemming from prolonged abuse, and long-term trauma that leaves survivors unable to navigate the complexities of the legal system. When victims withdraw or limit their involvement, courts lose access to critical direct testimony, significantly weakening the state’s ability to prosecute and hold abusers accountable.
To quantify this gap, the research team analyzed a sample of 20 recent domestic violence rulings, finding that only four victims chose to formally join proceedings as active plaintiffs. The vast majority of survivors participated only as witnesses, or opted out of any active role in the case entirely. The report also confirmed patterns long observed by anti-violence advocates: over 75% of all gender-based violence attacks are carried out by current or former romantic partners, most attacks take place inside the victim’s own home, and abuse is rarely an isolated incident, with most cases involving a repeated pattern of harm over months or years.
Broader national data included in the report underscores the scale of the gender-based violence crisis in the Dominican Republic. Between 2020 and 2024, national authorities received more than 341,000 formal violence complaints across the country, and 77.5% of those complaints were tied to either gender-based violence or domestic abuse. The study did not limit its scope to physical violence alone; researchers also examined extreme, life-altering attacks involving corrosive substances that leave survivors permanently disfigured, as well as the growing threat of cyber violence, which includes digital harassment, stalking, and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images – a tactic increasingly used by abusers to control and humiliate their victims.
The findings of the study fill a critical gap in local research on gender-based violence in the Dominican Republic, providing lawmakers and judicial leaders with actionable data to reform legal processes and better support survivors seeking justice.