A conference was held Monday in South Padre Island to discuss was officials called a growing, often invisible problem.

“I wish I could tell you we're winning the battle, but quite honestly we're not,” Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz said during the Crimes Against Women conference. “We're losing the battle. Every day the numbers increase. Every day, the seriousnessness of the offenses get worse.”

Police, prosecutors, victims advocates and forensic staff from multiple states attended the training that focused on rural and coastal communities.

Speakers say the reason why South Padre Island as the location for the conference is because crimes against women are more pronounced in resort communities, and harder to investigate.

“One of the biggest challenges we have here as a resort or tourist area is that our victims come on the island and they leave,” South Padre Island Police Chief Claudine O'Carroll said. “They're here for s a short period of time, but also our offenders and our suspects come on the island and they leave."

Dutchess County Medical Examiner Andrea Zaferes was at the conference to show police and prosecutors the signs that someone didn't die on accident

Zafres trains dive teams to find bodies, and she's a professional death investigator in New York. She says many of those homicides do not show clear signs of violence.

“They're believing the most believable person on the scene, and that's going to be the offender because they're the master manipulators,” Zaferes said. “They're fooling the victim's family, they're fooling everybody."

Speakers say law enforcement professionals are underprepared, and need more resources. 

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