Rape Culture in Alaska

The Atlantic has a long and incredibly detailed report of rape and sexual assault in Alaska that will literally depress the hell out of you.

However I think it is an important article and I urge all of you to read it.

Here are a few of the lowlights:  

In its short history as a state, Alaska has earned an unnerving epithet: It is the rape capital of the U.S. At nearly 80 rapes per 100,000, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, Alaska’s rape rate is almost three times the national average; for child sexual assault, it’s nearly six times. And, according to the 2010 Alaska Victimization Survey, the most comprehensive data to date, 59 percent of Alaskan women have been victims of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, or both. 

But those numbers, say researchers, just skim the surface. Since sex crimes are generally underreported, and may be particularly underreported in Alaska for cultural reasons. “Those numbers are conservative,” says Ann Rausch, a program coordinator at Alaska’s Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. “They’re still staggering.” 

The causes of the violence are complex and entrenched. Government officials, law enforcement personnel, and victim advocates note the state’s surfeit of risk factors, from an abundance of male-dominated industries, like oil drilling and the military, to the state’s vast geography, with many communities that have no roads and little law enforcement. “There are so many factors that tip the scale for Alaska,” says Linda Chamberlain, executive director of the Alaska Family Violence Prevention Project. Not the least among them: the lack strong law enforcement presence, or support services of any kind, in remote towns like Tanana. “It’s easier for perpetrators to isolate their victims and not get caught. And for people not to get help.”

The reason that so many sexual assaults are not reported is also fairly unique to Alaska:

While few victims deny that sexual assault and domestic violence should be punishable crimes, the public shaming of an elder or father or brother is a big deal in a village where everyone is related—either by blood, or by a lifelong relationship just as binding. “Everybody knows who’s doing what,” Erickson told me. “It’s common river knowledge. Who’s the molester. Who’s the abuser.” But families struggle to protect one another and their lives going forward, knowing that anyone they offend will be at the post office the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. Winters are long, brutal, and dark, and in a tight-knit, tiny community, connected to most of its income, medical care, and law enforcement only by airplane, conflicts often simmer in silence. Flights aren’t cheap; when tensions build, there’s no place to go. 

For that reason, family members often blame the victims, or the friends of victims, who attempt to report a crime, out of fear of losing material support, or a vital link in a precarious web of familial structure. When a young man from Tanana was accused of sexually abusing several village children a few years ago, some of his relatives verbally attacked the woman who turned him in, saying, “Shame on you. He had his whole life in front of him and you’re going to ruin it.” 

The cold hard facts are that men are more highly regarded in native villages than are women, who even today are seen as second class citizens, and less deserving of support then the men who hunt and fish for food to feed the village or work to bring money home to the local economy.

That's why, as I pointed out earlier, Sean Parnell's "Choose Respect"  is of no real value.

This problem is deeply ingrained in parts of Alaska society, and the ONLY thing that will make a significant difference is to spend a significant amount of money to create educational programs that will set up shop in these far flung villages, and more law enforcement professionals who are assigned the task of  making sure that predators are punished and victims are protected.

But I can tell you right now that the Republicans up here have no intention of spending money that will not create a return on their investment, and protecting the women who are NOT their own wives and daughters is of little interest to men who see natives as little more than savages, and who could not care less what happens in communities that many of them will never visit.