ABSTRACT
Throughout history women have been forced into marriage, taken into battle, exchanged as favors, or bought, sold, and otherwise exchanged as tribute. This chapter focuses on sexual violence in intimacy, which is a subset of gender-based violence, but in its most extreme form, it is closely tied to the trafficking and exploitation of women. It is based on the data collected over a period of ten years from the work in the Ricky Martin Foundation and the University of Puerto Rico. The chapter relies on the research conducted with the Women’s Attorney General Office in 2017 on the link between human trafficking and domestic violence. The work for this study included the analysis of 203 case files of women who received services in non-profit organizations focused on providing services to women who are victims of domestic violence. Gender-based violence is generally understood as a form of aggression in intrafamilial relationships or interpersonal violence in intimacy.
