Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said today that something must be done about the epidemic of domestic violence, sexual assault and sex trafficking among Alaska Natives and American Indians nationwide.
"The statistics on violence and assault are staggering, and whether it's one in three or one in four, any act of violence is unacceptable," Murkowski said in opening remarks at a Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing.
"I meet with far too many Alaskans who tell me things may be worse - there is so much whispered and silenced into the shadows, which damages not just the victims, but also their families," she said.
Murkowski's first question was to the Department of Justice, asking an associate attorney general, "Young women are being hunted. You've got predators waiting outside homeless teen shelters, going to events like the Alaska Federation of Natives conference. What is the Department of Justice doing to target these sex traffickers?"
I am very glad that Senator Murkowski is finally addressing this issue.
This has been one of Alaska's most terrible, and shameful secrets going back decades, and it is well past time that somebody well connected politically brought it out of the shadows and did something substantial to institute laws and educational programs to finally address the issue head on.
However I fear that Murkowki may not truly understand the depth of this problem. Here is how it was explained in a news report from December 2010, by the Fairbanks Newsminer:
Sex traffickers use a combination of mind games and beatings, promises and drugs to control girls, authorities said.
Alaska Native girls are commonly lured from their hometowns by friends or relatives who are already working as prostitutes. They invite the girl to come hang out and go shopping rent-free.
About one-third of the women arrested this year for prostitution in Anchorage are Alaska Native, according to Lacey's figures.
It was an Alaska Native girl who moved to Anchorage to stay with family at the age of 12 who helped point investigators toward another prostitution kingpin: Don Webster, also known as Jerry Starr, Goeden said.
Webster, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2008, had tried to recruit the girl, Goeden said.
The FBI agent got to know the teen during visits to a youth jail. The pair talked about how the girl ended up selling her body at age 14 in Anchorage.
"Her response to me was, 'I could be back home in the village where I could be having sex with my grandpa for free, or I could be here getting paid for me,'" Goeden said.
"I didn't know what to say. I had no idea how to respond to this little girl."
That is not a problem which a few stricter laws, or a few more rural community sex education classes, will solve. This is a problem with deep roots in how some in the native community view women, how these women often view themselves, and how outsiders take advantage of these vulnerabilities.
If Senator Murkowski is serious about tackling this problem she needs recognize that this is going to require serious money going toward education in rural communities, providing much easier access to specially trained and licensed counselors, and an increase in a law enforcement presence that can go to a village to remove a child who is being molested immediately and put them someplace where they feel safe and will talk about their rapist without fear of being placed back into their homes.
(For those who are interested, I also addressed this terrible problem in an earlier post entitled Alaska's Secret Shame.)
No comments:
Post a Comment