Empowerment

How Thailand’s weak domestic violence law sparked a survivor-led movement

Photography by Chanakarn Laosarakam and Luke Duggleby

Domestic abuse survivor Kay at her condominium in Bangkok in March 2025. Photo: Luke Duggleby

By
Wasinee Pabuprapap

Published 26 September 2025
7 min read

The 2007 domestic violence law offers weak penalties, narrow definitions, and a three-month reporting window. Survivors have decided they can do better.

The post went live in September 2023. “Hello. I’m here to expose the vile behaviour of the man who calls himself ‘my father’ – behaviour that my mother and I have endured for nearly 20 years.”

Within hours, Kay’s post exploded across Thai social media. A million views. More than 33,000 retweets. Strangers sharing their own stories of abuse. The 20-year-old had done something the Thai justice system couldn’t; she’d made domestic violence visible.

“If anything happens to us, we hope this tweet can serve as evidence,” her post continued.

Kay, who spoke under pseudonym, had good reason to fear for her family’s safety. The harassment hadn’t stopped when she, her mother and siblings fled her father earlier that year. Within two weeks of their escape, he’d tracked down their new apartment. His behavior escalated: he assaulted Kay’s mother outside her home. Family members warned that he’d made threats to shoot or kidnap them.

Survivors like Kay found that the traditional justice system would not protect them – Thailand’s 18-year-old domestic violence law has significant limitations. So they increasingly turned to the internet, and to each other, to bring abuse out of the shadows, protect themselves, and demand legal reform.

A familiar trauma

For Kanchana Di-ut, a 46-year-old woman from Chiang Mai, Kay’s posts deeply resonated. She spoke openly to HaRDstories, insisting she wanted to be named.

In the 2000s, when Kanchana was a university student, she worked as a cleaner for an influential man – an artist and philanthropist who co-founded a children’s foundation. During one shift, he assaulted her. The thoughts that followed were familiar to many survivors: “Who would believe me?” She needed the job, so she stayed, suppressing the trauma as what she now recognises was a “survival mechanism.”

Years later she married a man who began controlling every aspect of her life. Financial abuse. Sexual violence. Threats with a gun. Even after divorce, the violence continued – her ex-husband raped her repeatedly until she feared for her life. Finally, Kanchana fled to a friend’s house with only 1,600 baht in her pocket. The friend took her to a hospital for examination and offered to connect her with psychological services.

Legal action seemed impossible though. “I’m from a poor family, economic matters are very important,” Kanchana explained. “We have to focus our energy on making money to survive. But to fight a case, where do you get the money to hire a lawyer? Are there free lawyers?”

Kanchana’s experience reflects a troubling pattern across Thailand. A 2018 academic survey found that about 15 percent of Thai women had experienced psychological, physical, or sexual violence from an intimate partner. Government statistics recorded over 15,700 domestic violence cases in 2022, representing about 65 percent of all violence incidents reported that year. But experts believe that many cases go unreported.

Thailand achieved marriage equality. Intersex people are still waiting for their turn

by Pratch Rujivanarom

•

Legal abortion access meets moral resistance in Thailand’s migrant hubs

by Nicha Wachpanich

The reasons for this silence are complex, but a recent survey by the human rights organisation Fortify Rights found that many survivors consider legal protections inadequate under Thailand’s current framework. The result is that survivors often feel abandoned by the very system meant to protect them, sometimes retraumatised by the process of seeking help.

An outdated framework

Thailand’s approach to domestic violence relies on a law written in a different digital era when most social media platforms were just launching. The 2007 Domestic Violence Protection Law was groundbreaking for its time – the first Thai law to treat family violence as more than a private matter.

But the law’s limitations have become glaring over eighteen years. Survivors have just three months to report abuse, a timeline advocates call absurdly short. The definition of domestic violence excludes sexual abuse and psychological tactics designed to humiliate survivors.

Maximum penalties amount to six months in prison and a 6,000 baht fine, about 185 USD. In neighbouring Cambodia, perpetrators of violence against a spouse or partner can be sentenced to between 2 and 5 years’ imprisonment.

“The penalties under the Domestic Violence Act are so light that people aren’t deterred,” explained Thararat Panya, a lawyer who works with domestic violence survivors. “They’re not afraid of the law, so they often return to abusive behaviour.”

The system also emphasises mediation over accountability. Abusers can avoid conviction by agreeing to counselling or promising better behaviour. This approach prioritises family preservation over survivors safety. But even when authorities acknowledge the need for protection, enforcement struggles to keep abusers away from their survivors.

Broken safeguards

Kay had tried working within the system. She obtained a court protection order in October 2023, prohibiting her father from contacting the family. The process was lengthy and expensive, but Kay felt hopeful. She recalled thinking they would finally be safe after the court order was issued.

Three days later, her father violated the order by following Kay’s mother to work. When the family reported the violation to police, officers seemed confused. The protection order itself apparently didn’t reach the station until December – two months later due to court processing delays.

But the problems run deeper than administrative delays. Law enforcement officials often lack adequate training to handle domestic violence cases. “At the police station level, it is very difficult and training is extremely minimal when it comes to understanding issues of sexual violence,” said Police Lieutenant Colonel Phrueksa Boondamnern at Bang Khun Non Police Station. “This results in investigators lacking empathy for the victims.”

Thararat Panya is a lawyer who founded Feminist Legal Support, a non-profit group that provides consultations and legal assistance to survivors of gender-based violence. She described a system that re-traumatises survivors: At police stations, survivors are interrogated about their actions before, during and after the violence, often treated like criminals rather than survivors seeking help.

“We have to tell them honestly that the justice process is cruel,” Thararat told HaRDstories. When survivors do pursue cases, they must gather “concrete” evidence against their abusers – often impossible in intimate partner violence, which rarely leaves the kind of documentation courts prefer. The psychological manipulation and emotional damage that define these relationships become invisible to a system focussed on physical proof.

Justice for survivors depends heavily on individual officer discretion rather than standardised procedures, Thararat explained. “If I could wish for one thing,” she said, “it would be for people in the justice system, from police to prosecutors and judges, to understand that domestic violence is not a joke. It can lead to murder.”

Building from the ground up

The legal void has sparked a movement led by women who survived what the system failed to address. Four organisations – Break the Silence, SHero Thailand, Feminist Legal Support, and the Social Equality Promotion Foundation – have joined forces as the Coalition against Gender-Based Violence Thailand. All were founded by women who escaped intimate partner violence themselves.

Thararat started Feminist Legal Support after finding herself alone during her own experience with sexual violence. “I felt, why is it so difficult to seek legal help in sex-related issues?” she recalled. “I looked around, and there was no one.”

The coalition is drafting citizen-led legislation to present to Parliament. Their proposed “Draft Act on Protection of Domestic Violence” would expand definitions of violence, extend statutes of limitations, and ensure survivors remain central to policymaking. More than 10,000 people have signed in support.

“[This] must be a national agenda,” said Busayapa Srisompong, founder of SHero.

While advocates work on changing laws, survivors like Kay and Kanchana have had to find their own ways forward. Kay’s protection order expired after six months. Her mother made the difficult decision to return to living with her abuser, hoping to regain rights to the family business.

“Personally, I feel that what’s in the past is in the past,” Kay said. “There are only rare occasions when I look back and question my own decisions. But I never dwell on it to the point where it affects my daily life.”

She describes her emotions with a particular metaphor: “You could say my feelings are as small as a teacup. When new things come in, the old ones just overflow. And personally, I tend to focus on the present and the future more.”

For survivors like Kanchana, the path to healing came through community rather than courts. A friend paid for her to take a writing course, and two decades of suppressed pain poured onto paper. She refined and edited her words, then found the courage to share them in a feminist community.

“I am not dirty. I am not stained,” she wrote. “The one who is stained is the man who abused me. I am still pure. I am not dirty at all. Because purity lies in the spirit. We did not intentionally harm anyone.”

The words feel radical in a culture that often blames survivors. But Kanchana has found strength in imagining a different Thailand, one where children aren’t “indoctrinated into the culture of violence” but instead learn to respect all people.

“I believe that humans can change,” she said.

Edited by Fabian Drahmoune and Danielle Keeton-Olsen

This article was updated following clarification from police sources that delays in the court protection order reaching the police station were due to court processing times rather than police procedures.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, support is available in Thailand through the Social Help Center Hotline 1300, Women and Men Progressive Movement Foundation (02-513-2889) and Friends of Women Foundation (02-513-2780).

Wasinee Pabuprapap is a former host for an evening political program at TODAY, where she also produced the “Check and Balances” documentary series. You can find her recent byline in Techsauce, BBC Eye Investigations and BBC Thai.

Chanakarn Laosarakam is a photojournalist and stringer for AFP (agence france-presse) regularly capturing pivotal moments in politics and human rights.