State failed to comply with its obligation to protect, a failure that can take the form of acquiescence or tolerance in these cases. 1.2.3.3. Application to the facts of the case 221. Taking the foregoing into account, and with regard to the first element, the Commission finds that due to its characteristics, it is clear that the violence perpetrated against Linda Loaiza López from the moment she was deprived of liberty was intentional. Regarding the second element—that is, severity—the Commission has already found it proven that these acts of extreme cruelty took place and intensified over the passage of time, with devastating consequences for Linda Loaiza López that persist to this day. As was established, more than 14 years after the facts took place, Linda Loaiza López continues to deal with their physical and psychological effects. The Commission also reiterates that the victim’s severe suffering is inherent to sexual violence. 222. Likewise, and with regard to the third element, the Commission finds that these facts were intended to humiliate the victim and totally dominate her to establish a relationship defined by the power exercised by her attacker. This is reflected in the tone of the physical assaults and taunting to which she was subjected, as well as the psychological assaults that included constant threats against her and her family. Linda Loaiza López’s testimony is revealing when she describes how she had to take drugs, drink alcohol, and do a variety of things that she was forced to do “in order to survive.” The IACHR highlights that her testimony also reveals aspects of the submission her attacker sought in order to achieve his objectives. 223. The IACHR finds that determination of this end is applicable both to the purpose of discrimination mentioned in the United Nations Convention against Torture and to the obliteration of personality or diminishment of physical or mental capacity established in the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture. All these criteria are met in the gender violence verified in this case as a result of the absolute power exercised by the victim. In addition, as established in the Convention of Belém do Pará, violence against women is “an offense against human dignity and a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between women and men.”303 224. As far as the element of State participation or acquiescence, as indicated in the previous section, taking into account the extreme risk to which a woman who was reported missing is exposed, especially in more general contexts of gender violence and impunity for that violence that puts the victim in a special situation of vulnerability and qualifies her for increased protection, failure to fulfill these duties has not only a legal effect of incurring State responsibility for what happened to the victim but can also be understood as a form of acquiescence in the framework of the concept of torture. In this case, the Commission has already established that the grave acts of physical, psychological, and sexual violence—including rape— suffered by Linda Loaiza López were committed by a non-State actor in the context of the State’s failure to comply with its duty to prevent and protect once it became aware or should have known about the situation of risk she faced. With this omission, the Venezuelan State was acquiescent and tolerant of the torture to which Linda Loaiza López was victim while she was being held. 1.3. Conclusion 225. Given the considerations set forth in this section, the Commission concludes that Linda Loaiza López was the victims of acts of terrible violence for more than four months, involving physical and psychological injuries inflicted with extreme cruelty and various and repeated forms of sexual violence and rape, all of which had a profound and irreversible impact on her life. All this violence was motivated by and an expression of an acute cruelty toward Linda Loaiza López as a woman, which makes it possible to categorize it as gender-based violence, in this case of an extreme intensity. All these facts gravely affected her rights to humane treatment, personal liberty, privacy, autonomy and dignity, and equality and non-discrimination. 303 Preamble of the Convention of Belém do Pará.