In honor of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the Texas Council on Family Violence (TCFV) released its annual Honoring Texas Victims Report at a special Town Hall in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 1, 2026, featuring survivors of violence, victim advocates, Texas legislators, celebrities, youth and more. The report reveals 160 individuals in Texas were killed by intimate partner violence in 2025, representing just one less death than the previous year.
“The Honoring Texas Victims Report is a critical analysis tool, a memorial to those who were killed, and a call for Texas to do better. This report is the only one that compiles all intimate partner homicides in Texas and ensures their stories are used to build better protections for survivors and better accountability for abusers. The measure of this report’s success is not how completely it documents loss; it is how effectively it helps prevent the next one,” said Gloria Aguilera Terry, CEO of TCFV. “In 2025, Texas lost 160 individuals – primarily women – to intimate partner homicide and more than 240,000 family violence offenses were reported by the Department of Public Safety. We cannot look at these numbers and confidently say Texas is a safe place, but we can take action to make it better.”
The report reveals 136 women and 24 men were killed by their partner, former partner or stalker in Texas. Five of the women were pregnant and nine victims were identified as LGBTQIA+. As a result of these homicides, 128 minor children and 95 adult children lost one or both parents. Additionally, 15 children, family members, friends or bystanders were killed in connection with these incidents, bringing the total number of lives lost in these cases to 180 and underscoring the broader impact of lethal domestic violence.
Other trends in the Honoring Texas Victims Report include:
- Harris County led the state in number of intimate partner homicides (26 victims), followed by Dallas County (21), Tarrant County (16), Bexar County (13), Williamson County (7) and Travis County (6).
- 69% of victims were killed by an abuser with a firearm, supporting research that shows the presence of a firearm in a domestic violence situation increases likelihood of death for the victim by 500%.
- Domestic violence does not discriminate based on age. The youngest victim recorded was a 16-year-old female, while the oldest was an 89-year-old female.
- Of the 160 murders, 54 individuals (nearly 34% of perpetrators) committed suicide after murdering their intimate partner.
- The most common relationship type for this violence included married status (62 victims), non-married partners (64) and former non-married partners (25).
- 88 victims were killed in a shared home with their perpetrator, and 20 were killed in their own home, where they were meant to feel safest.
- 32% of offenders who committed intimate partner homicide had a known history of violence, underscoring opportunities for law enforcement and courts to collaborate with domestic violence experts to predict and prevent these homicides.
“Family violence is knowable, predictable and preventable, and it affects far more than just the people in the intimate relationship,” said TCFV’s Coordinated Responses and Safety Strategies Director Rosie Martinez. “Family violence is named so because it destroys the safety we are supposed to rely on in our own homes, and it puts the victim and everyone around the victim at risk of harm and even death. With the help of TCFV’s Honoring Texas Victims Report, Texas can very tangibly move towards preventing these tragedies.”
TCFV cites the creation of the Family Violence Criminal Homicide Prevention Task Force, developed in 2026 through Senate Bill 1946, as an important evolution in Texas’s response to domestic violence. The task force, housed under the Office of the Governor, is dedicated to examining the top known lethality risks in domestic violence homicides, including strangulation, the presence of a firearm and a history of stalking. The task force is comprised of survivors, advocates, law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, healthcare professionals, researchers, and policymakers who will present policy recommendations ahead of the 90th Texas Legislative Session. In honor of TCFV’s report, it is now referred to as the Honoring Texas Victims Task Force.
Martinez also says Domestic Violence High Risk Teams (DVHRTs) across the state are effective at intervening in cases where victims are at a high risk of intimate partner homicide.
New to the report this year is the notation of the disposition of every case, so readers may understand the outcome for the offender and justice provided to the victim and their family. Dispositions are found in the victims’ narratives of the report.
TCFV expects to use data from the Honoring Texas Victims Report to inform the 90th Texas Legislative Session, pushing to create safety for vulnerable survivors of violence and accountability for those who choose to use violence in their relationship as a control tactic.
Joining TCFV for the release of the Honoring Texas Victims Report in Austin, Texas, was celebrity Chef and domestic violence survivor Tommi Vincent, San Antonio survivor Mariah Gardner, Rep. Christian Manuel, TCFV’s 2026 Youth Activist of the Year Zahir Shaik, and leadership from domestic violence agencies across the state.
You can read the Honoring Texas Victims Report and all 160 victim narratives at www.tcfv.org/publications.
About Texas Council on Family Violence
Texas Council on Family Violence is the only 501(c) 3 nonprofit coalition in Texas dedicated solely to creating safer communities and freedom from family violence. With a state-wide reach and direct local impact, TCFV, with the collective strength of more than 1,300 members, shapes public policy, equips service providers, and initiates strategic prevention efforts. Visit us online at http://www.tcfv.org/.
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