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When Puerto Rico is in crisis, women are killed. My yearlong investigation into the island’s domestic violence epidemic found a government ill-equipped to protect victims and a police department littered with failures. https://gen.medium.com/in-puerto-rico-an-epidemic-of-domestic-violence-hides-in-plain-sight-c459d31ef616
More than 150 women were killed by their intimate partners in Puerto Rico over the past decade. In 2018, the intimate partner murder rate was 1.77—more than double of that in the entire U.S. https://gen.medium.com/in-puerto-rico-an-epidemic-of-domestic-violence-hides-in-plain-sight-c459d31ef616
The police department also has its own abuse crisis: Between 2015 and 2019, there were 449 domestic violence complaints against police officers.
In this period, there was only one trial that ended in a conviction. https://gen.medium.com/in-puerto-rico-an-epidemic-of-domestic-violence-hides-in-plain-sight-c459d31ef616
In this period, there was only one trial that ended in a conviction. https://gen.medium.com/in-puerto-rico-an-epidemic-of-domestic-violence-hides-in-plain-sight-c459d31ef616
The underfunding of victim’s services is a major problem. Puerto Rico has gone from 13 shelters to nine in the last decade. As of today, there are no shelters offering services to victims in the southern part of the island. https://gen.medium.com/in-puerto-rico-an-epidemic-of-domestic-violence-hides-in-plain-sight-c459d31ef616
Desperate advocates have begged Gov. Vázquez to declare a state of emergency over the crisis of gender violence, without success. Her office did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or a detailed list of questions sent via email. https://gen.medium.com/in-puerto-rico-an-epidemic-of-domestic-violence-hides-in-plain-sight-c459d31ef616
People in Vázquez’s working group for a national alert—a watered-down version of the state of emergency—say calls to fix the system's flaws have largely been ignored. Measures such as an education campaign against reggaetón have been praised, however. https://gen.medium.com/in-puerto-rico-an-epidemic-of-domestic-violence-hides-in-plain-sight-c459d31ef616
The Puerto Rican government’s hesitancy to prioritize the crisis of intimate partner violence is deadly. Read my entire investigation, published by @GENmag and @TypeInvestigate, here. https://gen.medium.com/in-puerto-rico-an-epidemic-of-domestic-violence-hides-in-plain-sight-c459d31ef616
We also published this piece in Spanish. Thread here: https://twitter.com/andreagonram/status/1277937221023207424?s=20
