Sex workers in Dominican Republic ‘routinely’ tortured and raped by police, chilling report finds

'Police routinely target and inflict sexual abuse and humiliation on women who sell sex with the purpose of punishing and discriminating against them,' says Amnesty International Americas Director

Campaigners called for the country to bring in a law to stop discrimination and abuse of the women – arguing that it could force the rest of the Caribbean to follow their lead (Getty Images)

Police in the Dominican Republic routinely subject women sex workers to rape, beatings and verbal abuse, a chilling new report has found.

Campaigners called for the country to bring in a law to stop the discrimination – arguing it could encourage the rest of the Caribbean to follow their lead.

A 52-page report by Amnesty International found the criminalised status of sex workers, coupled with profound machismo sentiment, drives arbitrary detentions by police and allows them to carry out serious human rights violations with impunity.

The report, called “If they can have her, why can’t we?”, traces the stories of 46 Dominican cisgender – someone who identifies as a woman and was assigned female at birth – and transgender women sex workers.

Many of them reported suffering various forms of violence – with campaigners saying much of this constitutes gender-based torture.

The report found the abuse is used to wield social control over the women and penalise them for transgressing social norms of acceptable femininity and sexuality.

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International, said: “The harrowing testimonies that Amnesty International has gathered from the Dominican Republic reveal that police routinely target and inflict sexual abuse and humiliation on women who sell sex with the purpose of punishing and discriminating against them.

Under international law, such treatment can amount to gender-based torture and other ill-treatment. By passing a law to prevent discrimination against some of the country’s most marginalised women, the Dominican Republic could set an example for the rest of the Caribbean to follow in the fight against stigma, machismo, and other drivers of extreme violence against women.”

She said gender-based violence is epidemic across Latin America and the Caribbean, and women sex workers are at particular risk from state officials and other individuals.

The Dominican Republic has a deeply machismo culture and is one of the few countries in the world which has a complete ban on abortion. The procedure is illegal in all cases, including when the life of the woman or girl is at risk.

The women had chosen to do sex work for a range of reasons – such as its ability to offer flexibility, control over their working hours, higher wages or provide them with financial autonomy. Others were forced to turn to sex work to cover their basic needs due to having limited options.

One woman told researchers she was raped one night in October 2017.

“There were three of them. I was on a corner waiting for clients… and they abused me,” she said. “They pulled me onto the [police] van… They saw that the area was empty… They started to grope me, take of my clothes. They ripped my blouse…. One after the other".

She continued: “I was afraid. I was alone. I couldn’t defend myself. I had to let them do what they wanted with me… They threatened me, that if I wasn’t with them they would kill me. They [said] that I was a whore, and so why not with them? They called me a 'bitch' and used many offensive words…. They saw me, I guess, and they thought ‘Well, if they [clients] can have her, why can’t we?’”

Researchers spoke to multiple women who described having been gang raped by armed and uniformed police officers in similar circumstances – late at night, on dark street corners, often in the back of police vehicles. At least ten of the 24 cisgender women they spoke to said police officers had raped them - often at gunpoint.

Around half of the women interviewed by researchers were cisgender women, the other half were transgender women.

The report also looked at how women sex workers who live with multiple discriminated identities – such as transgender women – experience even more marked exclusion and are at greater risk of torture.

The acute stigma and discrimination which limits Dominican transgender women’s access to formal employment means they are heavily represented in sex work. This is the same in many other countries.

Most of the transgender women researchers spoke to had been forced to endure discriminatory and violent treatment at the hands of the police, that could amount to torture or other ill-treatment.

They said they were called “fags” and “devils” by police officials – saying they felt they were deemed to be “aliens” or “animals”. Numerous transgender women reported that police punished them by burning their wigs or making them clean prison cells covered in excrement.

The report found impunity for sexual torture is typical – with the Dominican Republic failing to gather any data that would help to ascertain the scope and severity of the problem of gender-based torture and ill-treatment by police.

It is rare for the authorities to take sex workers’ complaints seriously.

“If you go to the police station to make a complaint, they treat you like a whore. They ignore you. They don’t pay you any attention,” one woman said.