Efforts to identify the causes of a disastrous rise in femicides

With the Dominican Republic placed on the list of countries where men most frequently put an end to the lives of women (17 in the first quarter of 2025), the first attempt to find an explanation for the bloody outbursts of masculinity each year was dramatically preceded by three words, no less important than other considerations on gender conflict and psychological processes that precede these horrendous crimes: anger, hatred and jealousy.

Considered the most extreme manifestation of abuse and violence from men towards the opposite sex, femicide appears in the latest Dominican statistics with 167 victims per year on average, to which must be added the enumeration of possible propensities to kill: misogyny (aversion or rejection of women), sense of gender superiority and the conception of feminine beings as “property of the male” within the framework of a tradition of cultural patterns that justify violence as a tool of domination.

Days ago, and in reaction to the latest murders of women in the country, family therapist Luis Vergés Báez mentioned to the health editor of this newspaper, Altagracia Ortiz, among other causes of femicides: Social factors that invite to resolve conflicts reactively and impulsively driven by hostile and derogatory ideas towards the lives of others; internal sense of vulnerability when (men) feel they cannot control or subdue others, as well as some untreated psychological conflicts associated with the outcomes.

He also said more about causes: “The rigidity of a thought that gives little space to mental flexibility and that prevents to see other options (to conflicts) that produce blockages to some people in which only to the impulsive action of the moment they find sense to them”. He also referred to the stressful burdens registered in the bosom of families whose neighbors are unknown to them and who, therefore, do not find an explanation for the tragedies because they assumed they lived in harmony in those homes.

Located in Latin America, the region with the second highest rate of female homicides in the world after Africa, the Dominican Republic ranks third in terms of annual murder rate in this part of the planet, at 3.6 per 100,000 women, only behind Honduras and El Salvador, which are characterized by a high prevalence of violence in the general sense.

Salvador, which are characterized by a high prevalence of violence in general.

The United Nations, UN, has been concerned about weaknesses in the Dominican law aimed at typifying femicides including an incomplete definition of the cases as “homicides of women committed by partners or ex-partners, while Dominican women have been persistently deprived of their lives by ‘suitors, neighbors, stepfathers, parents and others’.

This was the case in 2019, when the media reported 89 femicides and the Attorney General’s Office only admitted 77. It is questioned that institutionally, the country fails to conceptualize crimes legally, thus reducing its capacity to combat them.

ALCOHOL AND DEATH
A Latin American civil society organization conducted a study years ago based on the following: “One of the many risk factors for femicide that deserve to be analyzed in particular is the consumption of alcohol and drugs by the aggressors and their relationship with the reasons why, under the influence of these substances, they decide to take the lives of women” (Cepaz). (Cepaz)

In essence, it is recognized that personality is what most determines the behavior that individuals engage in after consuming alcohol and other similar substances. It is doubtful whether a man who is not violent by nature becomes so under the effects of narcotics or whether these only produce effects in individuals with a history of aggressiveness.

Computing cases and listening to other specialists from different fields, Cepaz’s research led to the conclusion that the consumption of alcohol and drugs alone is not a determining factor in violent behavior. It is preferred to believe that the neurological state of the consumer, his personality, and the social and cultural context in which the person develops can often be conducive to violence.

However, an ENDESA survey on demographics and health applied in the country led to establish an evident relationship between alcohol consumption and conjugal violence: women who had experienced any violence by their partners or ex-partners and whose husbands got drunk “sometimes or frequently” were more victims of aggression than those in marital relationships with teetotalers.

The World Health Organization prefers to understand that alcohol abuse by men is one of the main risk factors for intimate partner violence to occur and, although it is not the only cause, admits that it can be the trigger for it to happen.

EDUCATION AND VIOLENCE
Not a few behavioral investigations link the aggressiveness that leads to femicides with what men may learn, or not learn, before they become that way. In a broader context, it has been stated: “Violence and lack of education are related and both can have negative consequences on the health and learning of children and young people.” Therefore, education is seen as a fundamental tool to prevent gender-based violence.

Another study in Spain -the country in Europe that is most concerned about the rate of domestic violence- pointed in 2021 to the lack of education in adolescents and young people between 15 and 19 years of age as the factor that most influenced gender violence, followed closely by gender stereotypes that are part of patriarchal education; the one that leaves traces everywhere in the Dominican Republic.

Using education as a resource to move individuals away early from aggressiveness toward women implies teaching boys and girls to respect others regardless of their gender, promoting equal opportunities for men and women, strengthening children’s self-esteem, eliminating prejudices and stereotypes, listening to and believing the victims of abuse, etc.

MINORS ARE ATTACKED
The condition of minority in age does not save femicides in the Dominican Republic. Of the 58 cases registered last year, almost 16% corresponded to girls and adolescents, most of them with a pattern of previous rape. A story transcending the media under Kenny Cabrera’s and Nathalia Romero’s signature highlighted the case in November, in Villa Mella, of fifteen-year-old Veronica Crisostomo Berroa.

“She left her house without knowing that she would not return. The next morning, they found her lifeless body with multiple blows, thrown in some bushes”—child femicide.

“This type of feminicide, which is not typified in the Penal Code, is nothing more than another form of feminicidal violence exercised on children and adolescents as a result of macho violence,” Ana Andrea Villa Camaño, director of the Department of the Public Prosecutor’s Office oriented to gender violence, told another newspaper at the time. In the same way that Verónica was murdered, eight other girls were victimized in the period because of a system that failed to protect them.

The following observation has been made: Although femicide is typified in the bill for a new Penal Code as a separate crime within the attacks against the right to life, its legal treatment appears to be insufficient to address gender violence comprehensively.

Incidentally, at the time, the Ministry of Women criticized the inclusion in the bill of a paragraph that extends the “status of victims to men” in the same circumstances. Last year, Yanira Fondeur, president of the Foundation Life without Violence, highlighted another damage by extension to minors. In a whole year, 64 feminicides were counted at the national level, leaving 46 orphaned children.

It should be noted, however, that while it’s difficult to pinpoint an exact number, homicide statistics in the Dominican Republic (DR) show that men are significantly more likely to be victims of violence, including homicide, than women. Men are also more likely to be convicted of homicide. 

Creating an environment and culture of non-violence is the challenge, and it must be taught and reinforced from a child’s first years. This includes discouraging the use of physical punishment on children.