Along Alaska’s western coast, the city of Nome’s police department fielded 372 calls about sexual assaults against adults from 2008 through 2017. It made 30 arrests on sex assault charges in that time -- an arrest rate of 8%. See AP’s story.
; and showing less concern about rape complaints from African Americans, Native Americans and other less powerful groups.
The group, worried about a backlash, had met quietly on the edge of town for three years to plan their efforts. At first members tried to work behind the scenes with police and city leaders, but made little headway. They finally went public with their concerns in the spring of 2018. Habros finally sent a video statement to the Alaska State Troopers. The troopers’ investigation of the case ultimately led to the murder conviction of Nome Police Officer Matthew Clay Owens.
Soon after Taylor departed, Craig Moates flew in from Tennessee to take over the police department. Moates made a whirlwind tour of villages, saying it was his top priority to heal relations with the Native community. He promised to look into allegations of police misconduct. Jim LaBelle, who is Inupiaq and is a member of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, said Alaska Natives who have suffered sexual trauma often have few places to turn for help, and there are no protocols for healing entire communities that are still suffering. Many get comfort from embracing centuries-old traditions of subsistence living, he said, but they find even this alternative limited by legal restrictions on hunting and fishing.
On the night Susie says everything changed for her, she had come from her village farther north to visit a cousin in Nome. At a bar, she encountered a man she knew from another village who lived in Nome. According to the notes compiled by Barbara Cromwell, the lead forensic nurse at Nome’s Norton Sound Regional Hospital, Susie said the man bought her three shots of liquor — “I was just feeling a little bit ‘somewhere,’ but I wasn’t drunk.
“So I was like . . . must not be important enough,” Susie says. “Us Natives must not be important enough.”Under Cromwell’s direction, Norton Sound Regional’s forensic nursing program — established in 2010 to provide specialized care to victims of sexual assault and other violence — has grown. Cromwell said she was shocked when a Nome police officer casually let it slip in 2017 that police were regularly “weeding out” some sexual assaults on the spot, without bringing women to the hospital for an exam and an interview with someone trained in dealing with traumatized victims.
Paniaataq, who is Inupiaq, worked from 2016 to 2018 for the department as a community services officer, a civilian employee who assisted sworn officers. She turned to him in March 2017 after she awoke one morning, sore and bruised, with no memory of getting home the night before. Friends called her, she said, telling her about photos and a video posted on Snapchat that seemed to show a man having intercourse with her while she was unconscious.
Months later, she said, she discovered her complaint still sitting on the chief’s desk. Hardy contacted the city’s human resources officer, the municipal employees union and Alaska’s Office of Victims’ Rights. She eventually went on unpaid leave and then was terminated from her job because, city officials wrote her, she hadn’t returned to work after her leave expired.
Things began to change in August 2018 after Hardy’s sister Josie talked her into going to a community forum on public safety that the survivors group had organized. At the same time, revelations about her case came in the wake of the news that the department had rehired Carl Putman, a former Nome community service officer who months before had pleaded guilty to punching Florence Habros — the eyewitness in the Sonya Ivanoff murder case a decade and a half before.
Levi said Harvey told them that the only thing that could be done was to get a court order allowing her to record a phone conversation with the man she said had raped her — in the hope he might say something incriminating. After another three weeks passed without communication from police about her case, she said, she went online and wrote a long Facebook post about her experiences with Nome police. The post went viral and the newspaper followed with a story on Oct. 4 headlined: “A second woman comes forward to say she was raped in Nome without consequence.”
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