Domestic Violence in the Transgender Community

This piece was originally published in 2017. It was updated in 2025.

Key Takeaways

1. High Rates of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in the Transgender Community
   Transgender individuals, especially transgender women of color, face disproportionately high rates of IPV, including physical and sexual violence. Factors such as racism, transphobia and systemic neglect exacerbate their vulnerability, with many cases of violence against transgender individuals receiving little media attention or being mishandled through misgendering.
2. Barriers to Seeking Help
   Transgender survivors often encounter significant obstacles when trying to access support, including rejection by family and friends, discrimination in shelters and a lack of transgender-specific resources. Gendered shelter systems and harmful stereotypes frequently deny transgender women access to safe spaces, despite federal and state protections against discrimination.
3. Challenges with Law Enforcement and Legal Systems
   Many transgender individuals mistrust law enforcement due to high rates of bias, wrongful arrests and victim-blaming. This fear discourages reporting IPV incidents, further isolating survivors. Transgender individuals in correctional facilities are especially vulnerable to violence, with significantly higher rates of abuse compared to non-transgender inmates.

Domestic violence affects individuals of all gender identities, with transgender people facing particularly high risks. More than half, or 54 percent, of transgender and non-binary individuals have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetimes, according to the Human Rights Campaign. That’s significantly higher than the general population, in which 41 percent of women and 26 percent of men have encountered such violence, according to the CDC. 

Transgender individuals are 1.7 times more likely to experience any form of IPV, 2.2 times more likely to face physical IPV and 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual IPV than cisgender individuals, according to an analysis published in the American Journal of Public Health. 

Transgender women of color, and Black transgender women in particular, are disproportionately affected, often due to a combination of racism, transphobia and systemic neglect. According to a 2024 report by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, 75 percent of transgender people murdered in the prior year were people of color and 50 percent of them were Black trans women. Thirty percent knew their victims. Alarmingly, these cases frequently receive little to no media attention, and when they do, the victims are often (42 percent of the time) misgendered by the media and/or police.

These statistics underscore the heightened vulnerability of transgender individuals to domestic violence and the critical need for targeted support and interventions, especially considering transgender people face unique barriers in seeking help for domestic violence. They often experience:

• The risk of rejection and isolation from family and friends if they “out” themselves
• Not knowing where to find support and resources specifically for transgender people
• Possible discrimination from staff or other domestic violence survivors
• Fear that police and court officials may not be sensitive to their needs

Shelters May Support Harmful Stereotypes

Transgender individuals can experience discrimination when they seek help in escaping domestic violence. “Shelters are often divided by gender, and there have been a lot of transgender women who experience being turned away from women’s shelters because they don’t have legal documentation that says they’re female,” says Jay Wu, media relations manager for the National Center for Transgender Equality.

“This comes from the erroneous belief that transgender women are the ‘man in a dress’ stereotype. The concerns come from a place of wanting to protect the other women in shelters—and everyone’s priority is the safety of women who have to be in shelters. But it’s based on harmful stereotypes of transgender women. If someone is seeking shelter at a women’s shelter, it’s because she needs that. She has been through some kind of violence or situation that necessitates that, and she probably has nowhere else to go.”

Many shelters receive federal funds, and those that do have to follow the rules of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which prohibits discrimination against transgender people. “A lot of people still do face harassment,” Wu says. “They are turned away, told they have to go to a men’s facility or told they have to dress like the gender on their legal documents.”

Wu says that making the shelter aware of the law can be a good first step. “Sometimes the people turning folks away aren’t aware that what they are doing is illegal.”

In DC and 23 states, laws further help protect the rights of transgender people, so individuals in those states can seek legal assistance. Some cities also have their own nondiscrimination laws. Local LGBTQ community centers can be good places to turn for help, as can the Legal Services Corporation and the Transgender Law Center’s cooperating attorney network. The Transgender Legal Services Network can provide free or reduced-cost legal assistance and can help transgender people get their identification and documentation changed. Filing a complaint with HUD is also an option.

In addition to contacting a local shelter or hotline, transgender individuals can turn to FORGE, a national transgender anti-violence organization, for help in dealing with intimate partner violence beyond the issue of shelter discrimination. The shelter search feature at DomesticShelters.org allows people to see whether a shelter has specifically indicated whether they serve the LBGTQ community.

Problems with the Legal System

When it comes to reporting IPV to authorities, transgender individuals tend to be leery, and for good reason. They face significant bias and mistreatment from law enforcement. A 2023 report by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) revealed that nearly one-third (30.7 percent) of transgender people have been arrested, a rate disproportionately higher than that of the general, non-LGBTQ+ population (13.6 percent). So it’s little surprise that this group expressed reluctance in seeking police assistance in the future. About 61 percent of transgender individuals reported saying they would call the police for help as compared with 87 percent of non-LGBTQ+ individuals. 

This mistrust is often rooted in fears of being blamed for incidents of domestic violence or facing wrongful arrest. Transgender individuals may also fear that seeking help could lead to further victimization or discrimination by authorities. 

Incarcerated transgender individuals are particularly vulnerable to abuse. Nearly 37 percent of transgender inmates have been sexually assaulted compared with 3 percent of non-transgender inmates, according to The Marshall Project. This underscores the heightened risk of violence faced by transgender individuals, both within and outside of correctional facilities.

Finding Survivor Support

The following are nonprofits focused on reaching out to the LGBTQ community through education, sharing of stories, support and activism:

• The NW Network of Bi, Trans, Lesbian and Gay Survivors of Abuse
• The National Center for Transgender Equality
• Anti-Violence Project
• In Our Own Voices
• The Trevor Project
• FORGE

If you’re still struggling to find support, you may want to check out, “When Your Support System Isn’t Clear.”