A family therapist with nearly two decades of experience in the Dominican Republic's child protection system has warned that abuse against children and adolescents in the country is far more widespread than official records suggest, hidden by what he calls an enormous "dark figure" of unreported violence.
In an opinion column published in Diario Libre, Francis Williams wrote that childhood and adolescence are the most decisive stages of human development, yet reports of physical abuse, sexual violence and institutional neglect in the Dominican Republic point to a reality in which hundreds of children grow up with their most basic rights violated. He argued that what reaches the courts or makes headlines is only a fraction of the true picture.
The scale of unreported abuse
Williams pointed to the criminological concept of the "dark figure," the volume of crimes that are never reported or logged in official statistics. He said this gap is especially wide in the Dominican Republic.
Citing surveys by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the National Statistics Office (Oficina Nacional de Estadística, ONE), Williams said more than 63% of children aged one to 14 suffer or have suffered violent discipline, whether physical or psychological, within their own homes. He said formal complaints represent only a tiny fraction of that suffering, and questioned how many sexual and verbal assaults, and how many cases of abandonment, remain buried because of fear of the abuser, family complicity, the normalisation of violence or distrust in the protection system.
A legal principle, and a system that fails
Williams asked where the principle of the best interest of the child, enshrined in Law 136-03, has been lost. That law is the Dominican Republic's Code for the System of Protection and Fundamental Rights of Children and Adolescents, and it establishes that the wellbeing of minors must take priority in decisions made by the state and society. Williams said the law sets out this priority clearly, and that bodies exist to audit and oversee both nonprofit associations and government institutions, which makes it harder to justify the negligence and systemic violations he says occur inside spaces meant to be safe havens for vulnerable children.
When a minor under state guardianship or supervision suffers harm or abuse, Williams said, the entire system fails in its core mission. He argued the problem is not a lack of laws but a weakness in preventive monitoring mechanisms, a shortage of specialised staff, and unsustainable levels of what he called operational impunity.
Questions for a society and its institutions
Drawing on 18 years of continuous work in the country's Child and Adolescent Protection System, Williams said the moment has come for a pause and an honest reckoning. He asked whether society has normalised violence against children to the point of treating it as a private matter or a parenting method, and what real value a law like 136-03 holds if the institutions responsible for applying it operate with bureaucracy, passivity or slow, reactive responses.
He also asked how many more children must suffer in silence or flee from homes and shelters before child protection is treated as a genuine priority of the state, and whether national authorities and decision makers are waiting for further tragic incidents before acting instead of intervening beforehand.
The neurological toll of toxic stress
Williams wrote that neurobiology shows toxic stress in childhood alters brain development and helps perpetuate violence across generations. He said a country that ignores the trauma experienced by its children puts its own social and economic future at risk, and that protecting children requires rigorous oversight, adequate budgets and exemplary sanctions.
He said the response can no longer be postponed, warning that tomorrow will be too late for the thousands of children who are currently waiting for someone to protect them.
A call for reform
Williams called for specialists, authorities and civil society organisations to open a serious debate on the reforms the protection system needs, and to turn the urgency of the issue into concrete measures.
He closed by recalling a line attributed to the British author Agatha Christie, who is best known for her detective novels featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, describing a happy childhood as one of the most fortunate things that can happen to a person in life. Williams said guaranteeing that possibility should not be a privilege but an unavoidable responsibility of the family, society and the state.
