The effect along a year of COVID-19: The role of prior violence, social isolation, and substance use in psychological, physical, and sexual partner violence

The consensus is that intimate partner violence (IPV) increased during the COVID-19 lockdown. However, neither the long-term effect nor the mechanisms that explain this variation have been adequately identified (Peterman and Donnell 2020), a gap that applies to the literature in Peru and worldwide. The objective of this study is to assess the long-term impact in the 11 months from the start of lockdown on IPV, differentiating the effects by type of violence (psychological, physical, and sexual) and examining three mechanisms through which these effects may appear: prior violence, substance use, and social isolation. We do so by applying an event study and exploiting the time and location of hourly calls (N = 235,555) received by the only national helpline for domestic violence in Peru (Línea 100) (from 01/2018 to 02/2021). By focusing on Peru, we were able to respond to what happened to IPV during COVID-19 for a country in a complex situation for women: high pre-COVID-19 prevalence of IPV (Bott et al. 2019a), restrictive long-lasting lockdown measures during the pandemic, and the worst performance against COVID-19 in terms of deaths per capita and loss of national gross income. The results show that IPV varied but nonlinearly in the eleven months from the start of lockdown. Furthermore, psychological IPV was the one that showed the greatest increase, followed by physical IPV. Sexual IPV showed no changes. In terms of the impact mechanisms, previous history and alcohol consumption were the most important ones, with nonlinear variations over time. While nonlinearity may indicate a media regression to the mean for some cases as a sign of “new normal levels” of IPV, relationships with risk factors show an opposite situation in which IPV is still rising a year after the initial lockdown.