Each year, South Carolina releases statewide crime insight data compiled from a previous year; in the state's latest release of department data — with figures from 2024 — it reported more than 32,000 incidents of domestic violence.
The tally took into account "murder, aggravated assault, simple assault, and intimidation that involves victims and offenders who have either a familial or romantic relationship with each other." But the state can only report numbers it has data for.
About half of the nation's domestic violence instances go unreported, according to a U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics survey. And just of fraction of the 32,338 reported cases in South Carolina during 2024 went to trial. Whether through dismissals or plea bargains, alleged abusers seldom appear in front of a jury.
In cases of domestic violence, the state, not individual survivors, files charges. Law enforcement officers are not required to make an arrest when responding to a domestic violence call, but if charges are filed, even if an alleged survivor wishes to drop them, the decision is at the discretion of the circuit solicitor's office prosecuting the case.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division provided its data both with a statewide view and broken down by law enforcement division.
Overall, South Carolinians reported about 1,300 less instances of domestic violence in 2024 than in 2023. SLED's provided definition requires the parties involved to have a familial or romantic relationship with one another.
It breaks down victim-to-offender familial relationships as:
- Child
- Stepchild
- Grandchild
- Sibling
- Stepsibling
- Parent
- Stepparent
- Grandparent in-law
- "Other family member"
And it defines victim-to-offender intimate relationships as
- Spouse
- Common-law
- Ex-spouse
- Boyfriend
- Girlfriend
- Same-sex relationship
Of all 2024 instances of domestic violence with a known relationship, 36.4% were between a boyfriend and girlfriend, which led the state in relationship type. It was followed by spouse in level of prevalence, which made up 17.9% of relationships in known cases. The percentages are comparable to every other year of the 2020s in which data is available.
The state does not reveal in the public database how many instances of domestic violence involve repeat offenders. There have been efforts — both at the state and federal level — to create a public list of repeat violent offenders, but such a resource is not yet available.
Lacey Thompson, a criminal defense attorney with an office in Columbia, said that while she deals with repeat offenders, most of her clients who admit to the crime are isolated offenders. And while each case is nuanced, she said substances like alcohol play a part in many of the instances she works on.
"Alcohol is really big in domestic violence. It just is," she said. "Some situations, you have alcoholics who are abusers, and some situations are isolated. Somebody’s birthday and they had too much to drink. They don’t remember the night."
The consistency rang true for the other tracked statistics in the database. In 2024, 75.6% of domestic violence offenses were classified as simple assault; 16% of offenses classified as aggravated assault; 8.1% of cases were classified as intimidation; and 0.3% of cases were classified as murder and nonnegligent manslaughter.
At the state's 2025 Silent Witness Ceremony, a ceremony which honors people killed as a result of domestic violence, 35 women and 11 men who died in 2024 had their names read and lives honored.
Thompson is survivor of domestic violence faced as a child.
"I was in middle school, so I would say between 10 and 12. I told my grandmother that I couldn’t deal with it anymore, and I asked if I could move in with her, which was next door to my mom," she said. "And I told my mom it was me or him. It took about six months, I would say, and that is when she finally got the courage to leave him. But again, he had been arrested several times for domestic violence.”
Thompson said for a plethora of people — like her mother — it takes a serious tipping point to report domestic violence or even leave an abuser after the report is made.
"They’ve made this arrest, but they haven’t left the relationship. And they don’t have what they need at that point in their lives to be able to come forward and fight it to the fullest extent.”
And baseline, some are scared of what will happen should they leave the relationship, whether it is ending a romantic partnership or facing a member of their family. The fear can seep into the survivor's willing to cooperate in a trial.
"They’re scared of the other person. And they don’t want to go to trial and see them. And they fear for their safety or they haven’t left," Thompson said.
Even without a survivor's cooperation, the case can ensue with obtained evidence like 911 call recordings,
Thompson has worked for both guilty and innocent clients. Often, the speed of a trial depends on the jurisdiction and prosecutor. It can also hinge on a defendant's willingness to accept a plea deal, staffing level and the severity or classification of the charge.
Still, with these options available, the unreported instances of domestic violence make the issue difficult to completely quantify.
