By Giff Johnson
For Variety
MAJURO — Despite a high rate of domestic violence in the Marshall Islands, only a handful of women come forward to gain court offered protections against abusive partners.
There was an uptick in the number of civil petitions filed by women in 2025 seeking temporary protection orders. This follows an all-time low in 2024 of just a single domestic violence case being brought by a woman to the High Court for a protection order, according to High Court statistics. The year just ending saw an increase to six petitions filed by women seeking protection — including two during December.
But the trend the past several years has been well below the number of petitions filed by women with the High Court in the mid-2010s. Information from the past 10 years shows that in the three years from 2016-2018, 40 women brought forward motions to the High Court seeking temporary protection orders against violent partners. The most recent three years, 2023-2025, fewer than half this number of women — 16 — came forward seeking court protection.
The drop in High Court petitions from women seeking protection orders the past three years does not appear to sync with both published and anecdotal reports of ongoing domestic violence in the community.
The 2022 US Human Rights report on the Marshall Islands, for example, cited a World Health Organization report that “estimated that 38 percent of ever-married or partnered women ages 15 to 49 had experienced intimate-partner violence in their lifetime, and 19 percent had experienced it in the previous 12 months.”
Still, clearly fewer women are seeking court assistance since the number peaked at an all-time high of 16 in 2017. The most recent year with double digit domestic violence petitions to the High Court was 2021 with 15. The number ranged from one to nine case after 2021.
Many factors are involved in the challenge most women find to take action against abusive partners. One significant change in modern times is many women go to live with the family of the male partner, which eliminates the protection of the women’s immediate family members who are not present. Traditionally, in times gone by, men moved in with the woman’s family.
In addition, many Marshallese adopt the attitude that a husband is disciplining his wife by beating her, and older generation family members may brush it off as nothing. This is often coupled with shame many women feel from their family members for seeking help, according to local women who have experienced violence in their families.
December saw two domestic violence petitions filed by women with the High Court.
In one case, a High Court judge issued a temporary protection order, while a second petition filed at the start of the month fizzled when the woman who brought the complaint did not appear for the scheduled court hearing the following day, apparently a situation of a reconciliation with her partner.
The two domestic violence cases filed in December brought the total number of these petitions to the High Court in 2025 to six.
Both domestic violence petitions were handled by Micronesian Legal Services Directing Attorney Rosania Bennett.
In the first motion for a temporary protection order, a 40-year-old woman sought protection from her 49-year-old spouse. In the petition, she claimed that he punched her repeatedly while in their car going home, to the point she jumped out at a local park to seek help from another driver. But the other driver didn’t stop to assist.
Ultimately, the victim said she got back into the vehicle and when they arrived at their house, the husband threatened to beat her again, she said in court documents. But her brother stepped in to prevent further assault as did her daughter. The husband also reportedly punched e daughter as she tried to protect her mother.
This alleged assault occurred several days before the petition was filed in court December 1. The petitioner said it wasn’t the first time that this has happened.
High Court Chief Justice Carl Ingram scheduled a hearing the following morning, December 2. But, he said in his order, both the petitioner and her attorney did not appear. Bennett later updated the court that the petitioner had left a safe house operated by the national women’s organization Women United Together Marshall Islands, and could not be found. The chief justice said that if the petitioner or attorney did not advise the court if they wanted to proceed, he would consider dismissing the matter without prejudice — meaning it could be refiled at some later date.
The other petition was filed just before Christmas by a 45-year-old woman against her 44-year-old former boyfriend seeking protection. According to the documents filed with the court, the couple had recently broken up.
The petitioner alleged that on four separate occasions in December, the former boyfriend variously came to her house demanding she allow him in and searched every room to see if any men were there; beat her; chased her when she was driving two friends and a baby to town, forcing them off the road and assaulting one of her friends — an assault that was reported to Marshall Islands Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division; and called her threatening her.
Judge Anne Bodley, after hearing the petitioner’s testimony, issued a temporary protection order on December 23 that requires the former boyfriend to keep 200 feet away from her and not contact her by telephone or using the Internet.
