[2] The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes domestic violence in intimate partner relationships where there is emotion, physical, and/or sexual abuse.
[2] According to a study conducted in 2005 by the WHO, 1 in 6 Thai women in heterosexual intimate partner relationships have experienced or encountered domestic violence in their lifetime.
The study surveyed Thai women in central, southern, northern, and northeastern Thailand through simple random sampling.
These violent acts included being slapped or thrown, pushed or shoved, hit with a fist, kicked, dragged or beaten, burned, or threatened to use a weapon.
This difference in results between 2005 and 2017 can be due to new policies and campaigns against domestic violence launched in Thailand in the past 10 years before the study was conducted.
The language before 2007 stated, "any person who commits sexual intercourse with a woman who is not his wife, and against the latter's will, by threatening her, or doing any act of violence..., shall be punished to imprisonment..." The law omitted the phrase "with a woman who is not his wife", in order to legally recognize victims of sexual assault or abuse whose rapist was their husband.
In an effort to raise awareness surrounding rape and sexual assault and to reduce its frequency, the Crime Suppression Division or CSD recognized rapists in Thailand as "No.1 public enemy".
[4] In a 2016 Op-Ed column written in the Bangkok Post, Paisarn Likhitpreechakul mentioned that many lesbian women in Thailand are raped as a corrective "cure" to their sexual orientation.
Women's "lower karma" subjects them to a life of suffering from which they should endure with bravery so that they can eventually be reborn as a man in their next lifetime.
Women in Thailand who've experienced domestic violence are often given advice from Buddhist monks to be patient and compassionate with their perpetrators as the victims' suffering is a product of bad karma from a past life.
These roles can be traced back to eighteenth and nineteenth century legislation in Thailand that recognized wives as property of husbands that could be subjected to corporal punishment or sold.