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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN LAW BUT NEEDS ENFORCEMENT, GRASSROOTS ADVOCACY, END FOR IMPUNITY

Davinder Kumar – WNN Features

Deborah, a 38-year-old Dominican woman talks about domestic violence inside the Dominican Republic saying that violent attacks on women by men are usually fueled by alcohol. Since the youth gender sensitivity groups were set up in her village there has been a noticeable drop in the number of violent events against women. Image: Davinder Kumar/Plan International

(WNN/PI) Santa Domingo, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: With Dominican Republic’s national legislation against violence in place, as well as the international laws on human rights, it is clear that the duty to exercise due diligence to prevent, prosecute and punish violence against women should exist. But very little real protection exists for women in reality as many continue to suffer violence on a daily basis as the majority of perpetrators go unpunished.

Every two days, sometimes each day, a woman is killed in an act of violence in the Dominican Republic. For an island nation of nearly ten million, over a thousand women have been killed in the last five years. In the majority of cases the perpetrators were intimate partners of the victims.

For the majority of women escape can be very difficult. Their dependence on male partners for financial and emotional support often means they continue to suffer in silence. Those who dare face the spectre of being left on their own, often risking worse reprisals and backlash.

Behind the veneer of glorious sunshine and sandy beaches, the holiday resort nation of the Dominican Republic is grappling with brutal killings and violent attacks on young girls and women.

At the age of 24, it is already a struggle for Alta Gracia to carry on living. Each time she looks at herself in the mirror all she can see is deep scars on her face and belly. Her machete brandishing former partner was adamant to finish her off. Seeing her bleeding profusely he left for her dead after his attack and disappeared.

From plush urban enclaves to deprived rural counties, ‘machismo’ pervades all classes and can be found in every community in the Dominican Republic. The by-word for ultra-masculinity, ‘machismo,’ has come to be regarded as a natural attribute for tough men who often dominate women with unprovoked aggression using violence as a way of life.

From alcohol and drugs, anger to jealously, dispute or just a bad day – anything can serve as a trigger for some men in the Dominican who want to unleash violence on women.

An overwhelming number of 62,000 complaints of gender violence against women were reported in the Dominican Republic in 2010, said Prosecutor for Woman Affairs Roxanna Reyes who is now also the Deputy Attorney General in the Dominican Republic, to local news daily Dominican Today in November 2011.

“We cannot go much further, we’re living it day to day, with cases which we didn’t see five years back,” continued Reyes. Just 4 per cent of charges against perpetrators went on to legal trials. Dominican court cases range from sexual violence involving young girls, to women being stabbed to death.

Urbanization is a contributing part of the problem in the Dominican Republic. The urban slum of La Puya, just outside of Santa Domingo, is a case in point. Urbanization and poverty together are strong indicators that can increase family stress, alcoholism and domestic violence.

“It is now well-recognized that violence is not evenly spread across cities, but tends to concentrate in particular geographic areas,” says a detailed April 2011 World Bank report. “These “hot spots,” or “no-go zones,” tend to have several structural features in common, and these commonalities extend across countries. That is, violence generally concentrates in areas of strong economic disadvantage, social exclusion, and poverty,” continued the report.

When children witness spousal abuse they are also more likely as adults to repeat the violence they have witnessed in the home.

“In environments of chronic violence, a cycle of violence is created between victimization and perpetration that can persist over generations,” added the World Bank report.

Considering a vast number of cases in the Dominican Republic are not even reported, a real estimate of the extent of the situation is hard to gauge. Fighting a lonely battle, women are often coerced into retracting statements they made to police or legal advocates by their perpetrators, or they simply give up in frustration for making little progress.

Due to their dependence on male partners for financial and emotional support, women often continue to suffer in silence in the Dominican Republic. Silence and isolation often feeds into violence against women. This elder woman stands in the doorway of her home in Barahona. Image: Davinder Kumar/Plan International

Due to their dependence on male partners for financial and emotional support, women often continue to suffer in silence in the Dominican Republic. Silence and isolation often feeds into violence against women. This elder woman stands in the doorway of her home in Barahona. Image: Davinder Kumar/Plan International

The reality begins to sink in when Deputy Attorney General Reyes, a woman herself says the police and the judges – even female judges – have cultural prejudices and myths around domestic violence. For women, starting from the perpetrator to family members, to the community, police and the judiciary, there are multiple barriers and prejudices to reporting violence and seeking justice. At every level victims drop out in their attempt to stop the violence. This often happens to victims as they often return to the cycle of violence that also often continues, if they manage to survive.

“It takes on average 5 years for victims of violence to realize their status and up to 15 years for women to come out of the circle of domestic violence,” says Reyes. Reyes, who holds the highest office in Dominican government for a woman, is trying to tackle Dominican’s systemic culture of gender-bias head on, starting with sensitizing her key constituents in the legislature, including the executive and the judiciary branches of the Dominican Republic’s government.

“The majority of political leaders are male,” says Reyes. “They do not necessarily look at the female perspective. We need to revolutionize the system,” she outlines.

It may well warrant efforts on the scale of a revolution to save the women of the Dominican Republic from violence, as lack of funds and inherent gender discrimination means that women are ‘way down’ on the priority list.

In Barahona province, 17-year-old Orvis is on the frontline taking his anti-violence message straight to the communities and homes where violence occurs. He spends his after school hours in nearby villages going door to door raising awareness on the issue of domestic violence. Like other provinces, alcoholism, drug-abuse and domestic violence is rife in Barahona’s villages. “In my village there is a man who used to beat his wife with a stick. He thought it was his right to beat his wife and so did others in the village. I told him that he was committing a crime and that he could be jailed. It took some efforts and a few visits and he finally stopped,” outlines Orvis.

Orvis is part of a small force of young people who are volunteers for child rights organization Plan International. As part of the focus, the young people work in communities, raising awareness to stop the cycle of violence which affects the lives of children in families where violence is routine. Having what advocates call  “devastating consequences” for the women and children who experience or witness it, experts believe children who grow up in families where there is repeated violence may suffer a range of behavioral and emotional trauma.

Organizations, like Plan, can often only address limited aspects of society problems in the Dominican Republic that often run deep. The solution, like the work of Deputy Attorney General Reyes, is now trying to filter down from the top, but advocates say it also must start from the bottom grassroots – from families and communities upwards.

It means reaching people like 60-year-old Lourdes who have resigned to their fate.  She says, “It is common in our community to hit women. It is a tradition.” After suffering 23 years of incessant violence, Lourdes had no other choice but to separate from her husband as she was certain she would be killed one day. “He used to attack me with a machete. He nearly slit my daughter’s throat,” she adds.

The Dominican Republic is certainly not the only country where women face indiscriminate violence and death in their daily lives just because of their gender. Violence against women is a universal phenomenon. It is not only restricted to developing nations. It persists in all countries and cultures across the world with cases that can be ‘alarmingly’ common and accepted as ‘normal’ within numerous societies.

According to United Nations data in Australia, Canada and Israel, 40 to 70 per cent of female murder victims were killed by their partners. In the United States, one-third of women murdered each year are killed by intimate partners. In Guatemala, two women are murdered, on average, each day. In South Africa, a woman is killed every six hours by an intimate partner. In 2007 reports from India have indicated that 22 women were killed each day in dowry-related murders.

Women aged 15 to 44 currently are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, motor accidents, war or malaria, says the World Bank. However, today there is still little comparable data that has surveyed the magnitude of violence against women, and little to guide policy or monitor implementation. The often used reference point for numerous stop-domestic-violence advocates is a WHO – World Health Organization multi-country study in 2005 that found that between 15 and 71 per cent of women reported experiencing physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner at “some point in their lives.”

Advocates and experts believe that this form of violence results in physical, mental, sexual, and reproductive health problems, among other issues.

Alta Gracia, for instance, is now battling serious repercussions from the attack that nearly killed her. Physically and psychologically scarred she contemplated suicide on a number of occasions, but changed her mind thinking of her son. Pointing to her scarred face which has still not healed she asks: ”Who will ever love me?” Battling depression she hopes a reconstructive surgery can help her to face the world again.

Her perpetrator, like many others, is still absconding justice.

(Special note: some names have in this story been changed to protect identities.)