“Why didn’t they just leave?” It’s a question I’ve heard many times over the years as survivors have trusted me with their experiences of domestic violence. Friends, family members, coworkers, and sometimes even victim service providers ask it. On the surface, it seems like a harmless inquiry. But what the question often overlooks is that leaving an abusive relationship requires more than simply making a personal choice. It requires having the resources, social support, and opportunities necessary to make those choices safely.
I am a tenured associate professor of criminal justice, a social scientist, and a confidential advocate at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). Through my research and advocacy, I have come to understand domestic violence from two perspectives. One can examine how violence operates within relationships, families, and communities. The other examines what happens when survivors turn to the institutions intended to protect them. My research on intimate partner violence among Hispanic women, reproductive coercion, maternal health, and sexual victimization has reinforced something I see in survivor advocacy: experiencing violence is not the same as having the resources necessary to escape it. For Latina and immigrant women in Texas, decisions surrounding safety may also involve financial stability, family responsibilities, healthcare, language, and immigration-related concerns. What these perspectives reveal is that leaving violence does not necessarily mean leaving fear behind. Having legal rights is not the same as having the resources needed to exercise them.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and organizations across Texas will shine a light on survivors, memorialize lost lives, and reaffirm commitments to prevention during this month and beyond. But shining a light on domestic violence isn’t enough to solve a problem perpetuated by economic insecurity, inequitable access to resources and victim services, institutional policies and procedures, and social expectations that too often blame victims for their abusers’ behavior.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent 2023–2024 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey Report, about one in three women and more than one in six men in the United States have experienced contact sexual violence, stalking, or physical violence from an intimate partner in their lifetimes. Staggering as those statistics are, they serve as a reminder that domestic violence knows no geographic, socioeconomic, educational, or cultural boundaries.
Tragically, in Texas, it can also lead to death. In 2024, the Texas Council on Family Violence documented 161 Texans killed by intimate partners, including 137 women and 24 men. These homicides also left 104 children without at least one parent. Each victim is someone’s friend, coworker, student, or family member. Each statistic represents more than a victimization; it is a life cut short by violence and victimization.
The first challenge we face when addressing domestic violence is defining violence itself. We think of domestic violence as intentionally causing physical harm to a current or former partner. While many survivors experience this, intimate partner violence also includes sexual violence, threatening or stalking behavior, intimidation, harassment, isolation, pet misuse, financial abuse, and other non-physical behaviors that instill fear and exert control over another person. Abuse can occur without leaving bruises or broken bones.
Sometimes, abuse also involves controlling another person’s reproductive decisions. Reproductive coercion can include interfering with contraception, pressuring someone to become pregnant, or attempting to control decisions about pregnancy. In research conducted with my colleagues involving Hispanic women, we found an association between intimate partner violence and unintended pregnancy, with important differences depending on marital status. These findings remind us that abuse can undermine a woman's reproductive autonomy, with consequences that extend beyond the relationship itself. For someone already concerned about housing, employment, childcare, and financial security, reproductive coercion can make the path toward safety even more complicated.
The second challenge involves the resources required to leave an abusive situation. For Latina and immigrant women in Texas, these decisions may carry additional consequences. A woman who depends on her partner for transportation, housing, or financial support may have few immediate alternatives. Someone whose immigration status is uncertain may worry about how contacting law enforcement could affect her family. Language barriers, limited access to legal assistance, and unfamiliarity with available services can make an already dangerous situation more difficult to navigate. In communities along the Texas-Mexico border, these concerns deserve particular attention. A survivor may need to consider whether she can afford housing, maintain employment, care for her children, or safely separate from an abusive partner. When leaving threatens someone's financial stability, family relationships, or ability to meet basic needs, it becomes much more than a matter of deciding to walk away.
A 2022 study of more than 4,300 U.S.-born and foreign-born Hispanic women using national crime victimization data found that reported intimate partner victimization differed by nativity, with higher rates among U.S.-born Hispanic women than their foreign-born counterparts. Education, relationship status, and geographic region were also associated with victimization. These findings remind us that Latina women do not experience domestic violence in the same way simply because they share an ethnic identity. For communities across Texas, particularly along the Texas-Mexico border, this research reinforces the importance of recognizing that survivors have different circumstances, resources, and needs. Culturally responsive advocacy must account for those differences rather than assume that one approach works for everyone.
Recognizing these concerns does not mean accepting or minimizing abuse. It means understanding the conditions that can make seeking help extraordinarily difficult. A 2021 study on immigrant women in North Texas found that transportation was both a tool of abuse and a barrier to leaving. When an abuser controls someone’s ability to move freely, leaving becomes far more than a matter of picking up and walking away. For many survivors, it can be a logistical, financial, and dangerous challenge.
The consequences of domestic violence can also extend well beyond the relationship itself. A 2026 study using national maternal health data to examine intimate partner violence and traumatic stress during pregnancy found that Hispanic women who reported violence during pregnancy had elevated odds of prenatal depression and diabetes. Financial instability and other stressful life circumstances were also associated with adverse maternal health outcomes. Although these findings reflect a national study, they raise an important question for Texas: What does safety look like for a pregnant survivor who needs prenatal care, transportation, stable housing, and financial support while also experiencing abuse? Telling her to leave does not resolve those needs. For many survivors, achieving safety requires addressing their physical health, emotional well-being, reproductive autonomy, and economic security.
This brings me to the third challenge: how institutions respond when survivors seek help. Too often, we measure our response to domestic violence by the policies, procedures, and actual services we have established rather than whether survivors can meaningfully access them. Laws, protective orders, counseling services, shelters, and crisis hotlines are important. But having these protections available does not necessarily mean a survivor can obtain immediate refuge, navigate the process independently, or access the support needed to remain safe.
A survivor might ask how to file for a protective order but lack transportation to the courthouse, knowledge of where to file, or access to legal assistance to help them complete the paperwork. Someone may call the police about stalking but have difficulty conveying the threat they feel after enduring months or years of harassing behavior. Victims of sexual assault often require medical care, academic accommodations, flexibility at work, financial assistance, and support navigating various institutions far beyond filing a police report.
When viewed through a criminal justice lens, these challenges highlight how “getting justice” can mean different things to different people. Someone can be validated as a victim by law enforcement or the courts and still be burdened with navigating multiple organizations, reliving traumatic events, and personally acquiring the resources they need to achieve safety.
Colleges and universities face many of these same challenges. Students, faculty, and staff who experience dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, or harassment do not suddenly stop having academic, professional, or family responsibilities. A student may struggle to meet academic deadlines while navigating concerns about personal safety. A faculty or staff member may need to maintain professional responsibilities while managing the consequences of victimization. For some survivors, seeking help can affect not only their immediate safety but also their educational opportunities, career trajectories, mental health, and financial stability.
These concerns are particularly relevant to institutions serving large Hispanic student populations across Texas. A 2026 study of more than 3,500 college students found that reported sexual violence victimization varied by race, gender, and sexual orientation, highlighting the importance of culturally responsive and survivor-centered campus services. Students may also face concerns about confidentiality, institutional trust, financial stability, and academic consequences when seeking help. For survivors at colleges and universities across Texas, accessing support can involve more than knowing where to file a report. It can mean navigating institutional procedures while protecting their safety, education, and future opportunities. For survivors at colleges and universities across Texas, accessing support can involve more than knowing where to file a report. It can mean navigating institutional procedures while protecting their safety, education, and future opportunities.
For this reason, campus-based victim advocacy shouldn’t stop at defining reporting options. It must recognize that survivors often need immediate emotional support, individualized safety planning, academic and workplace assistance, referrals to healthcare and legal services, and guidance navigating complex institutional systems. Confidentiality, informed decision-making, and survivor autonomy are essential to this process. Asking a survivor whether they reported violence should never be the first or last question we ask. Rather, we should consider whether they can access compassionate, trauma-informed assistance without experiencing additional harm from the very systems intended to protect them.
At UTRGV, survivors of dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking have different options for seeking assistance based on their individual needs and preferences. The university’s Your Choices for Help: Confidential Advocacy & Reporting resource guide distinguishes between making an official report and seeking confidential assistance, explaining available pathways and providing contact information for campus services. This resource guide matters because seeking help and filing an official complaint are not necessarily the same decision. A survivor may need someone who will listen without judgment, explain available resources, or help identify immediate safety concerns before deciding whether to pursue a formal report. Confidential advocacy provides an opportunity to explore those options while respecting the survivor's preferences and the applicable limits of confidentiality.
The final challenge is one we must confront about ourselves and the communities we serve. We like to celebrate resiliency without always acknowledging the conditions that require individuals to become resilient. We applaud those who survive abuse but spend far less time thinking about whether our institutions offer safe housing, adequate services, economic opportunity, and meaningful protections. We expect survivors to be brave but rarely question if our systems show them the same level of accountability.
Family is important here in the Rio Grande Valley. Relationships with one’s relatives, cultural heritage, and established community networks can provide survivors with important sources of strength, belonging, and protection. Yet these same relationships can become complicated when someone experiences abuse. A survivor may worry about disappointing relatives, disrupting her children's lives, or being judged for disclosing violence within her marriage. For immigrant women, these concerns may intersect with immigration-related uncertainty, financial dependence, and unfamiliarity with institutions. We must be careful, however, not to mistake cultural values for explanations of violence. Family loyalty does not cause domestic violence, and being Latina or an immigrant does not make someone more deserving of blame or less deserving of protection. Responsibility remains with the person committing the violence. Our responsibility as a community is to ensure that cultural identity, language, and immigration-related concerns do not become barriers to obtaining meaningful assistance.
These concerns are not unique to Latino families. They remind us that advocacy across communities must be culturally responsive, recognizing the strengths of family and community networks while acknowledging that social expectations can also influence someone's willingness or ability to seek help.
First, we must stop treating domestic violence as solely a matter of individual choice. Holding abusers accountable is necessary, but our response must extend beyond arresting offenders and relying on the criminal justice system alone. Survivors also need safe and affordable housing, financial stability, access to healthcare, and opportunities to rebuild their lives without continued threats of violence. When these resources are unavailable, leaving an abusive relationship may mean exchanging one form of insecurity for another. If we expect survivors to seek safety, we must also ensure that meaningful opportunities for safety exist.
We also need to fund advocacy, confidential shelters, equitable emergency and transitional housing solutions, accessible services (including those that are culturally and linguistically appropriate), transportation assistance, and economic empowerment programs. Making services available is only the beginning. Institutions must also communicate clearly whether assistance is confidential, what reporting obligations may apply, and how survivors can access support without unnecessarily sacrificing their autonomy.
In South Texas, that commitment must include recognizing the needs of immigrant and Latina survivors who may hesitate to approach institutions they do not know or trust. Services should be available in the languages survivors understand, with clear explanations of confidentiality, reporting requirements, and available legal protections. Advocates should be prepared to coordinate with qualified immigration attorneys, healthcare providers, housing programs, and community organizations when survivors request that assistance. We must also recognize that safety planning is not a single event. For a survivor who is pregnant, raising children, financially dependent on a partner, or concerned about her family's immigration circumstances, establishing long-term safety may require support from several institutions working together. The measure of an effective response should not simply be whether a survivor filed a report, but whether she was able to obtain meaningful assistance without surrendering control over her decisions.
Texas Council on Family Violence’s 2025 Needs Assessment is a great place to start understanding service gaps across Texas and developing solutions with survivor input. In higher education, prevention must also extend beyond responding to violence after it occurs. Campus-based advocacy and prevention initiatives can help students, faculty, and staff recognize coercive control, identify warning signs of interpersonal violence, understand available resources, and challenge attitudes that normalize abuse or blame survivors. Education, bystander intervention, and institutional accountability are important components of creating campus environments where survivors feel supported and violence is neither minimized nor tolerated.
But most of all, we need to stop questioning why someone chose to stay in an abusive situation. Not every survivor wants the same thing. Not everyone can leave right away or even knows how. Some survivors want separation but not divorce. Others may want protection from their abuser but choose to remain in the relationship. Others may simply want to protect their children, keep their jobs, or ensure they have a place to sleep at night.
A survivor-centric approach to advocacy recognizes that our job is not to decide what someone needs. It’s to offer compassionate support and resources based on their unique needs, empower them to make informed decisions about their lives, and trust them to determine what best helps them survive abuse.
Domestic violence does not continue because survivors fail to make the “right” decision. It continues because people who commit abuse exploit vulnerabilities that our communities and institutions have too often failed to address. In Texas, this requires us to examine not only how we respond to violence, but whether survivors have the housing, healthcare, transportation, economic resources, legal assistance, and culturally responsive services necessary to rebuild their lives.
For Latina and immigrant women, that responsibility also means ensuring that language, cultural expectations, financial dependence, and immigration-related concerns do not become insurmountable barriers to safety. Survivors should not have to choose between protecting themselves and protecting their families. They should not have to navigate complicated institutions alone or prove that they have exhausted every possible option before receiving support.
No one should ever have to choose between living and dying; between their safety and their abuser. And no survivor should ever have to earn our support by demonstrating how hard they tried to leave before they asked for help. Perhaps the question we should have been asking all along is not why they did not leave, but whether we have done enough to make safety possible.
Editor's Note: The above guest column was penned by Dr. Lucas Enrique Espinoza, associate professor of criminal justice and assistant director of faculty advocacy with the Office for Advocacy & Violence Prevention (OAVP) at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). The column appears in the Rio Grande Guardian with the permission of the author. Its analysis reflects the views of the author and not UTRGV..
Lucas Enrique Espinoza, Ph.D. CHW, CHW-I. He currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and is the Assistant Director of Faculty Advocacy with the Office for Advocacy & Violence Prevention at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Dr. Espinoza earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from Texas Woman’s University, with a major in Social Organization/Disorganization and a minor in Multicultural Women’s & Gender Studies. He holds multiple advocacy-driven professional credentials, including certifications as a Community Health Worker (CHW), Community Health Worker Instructor (CHW-I), Adult Mental Health First Aid Instructor, Mental Health First Aider (MHFAider-Adult & Youth), Human Rights Consultant, and Certified Peer Educator. He is a social scientist who focuses on violence and victimization, resistance in sociocultural and historical contexts, as well as education within the field of justice studies. Using trauma-informed, intersectional and culturally competent lenses to further advocacy for survivors and the fields of public health and social justice.
