The Stories
» Alaska Native woman in Fairbanks
» Rhea, a Native American woman from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation (North and South Dakota)
» Mother of a survivor of sexual violence from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation
» Village man arrested after eight-hour rampage, Nunam Iqua, Alaska
» Cherokee woman living in Tahlequah, Oklahoma
» 16-year-old Native American girl in Grand Forks, North Dakota
» Amnesty International interview (details withheld)
Alaska Native woman in Fairbanks
In July 2006 an Alaska Native woman in Fairbanks reported to the police that she had been raped by a non-Native man. She gave a description of the alleged perpetrator and city police officers told her that they were going to look for him. She waited for the police to return and when they failed to do so, she went to the emergency room for treatment.
A support worker told Amnesty International that the woman had bruises all over her body and was so traumatized that she was talking very quickly. She said that, although the woman was not drunk, the Sexual Assault Response Team nevertheless “treated her like a drunk Native woman first and a rape victim second”.
The support worker described how the woman was given some painkillers and some money to go to a non-Native shelter, which turned her away because they also assumed that she was drunk: “This is why Native women don’t report. It’s creating a breeding ground for sexual predators.”
Interview with Alaska Native support worker (identity withheld), July 2006
Rhea, a Native American woman from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation (North and South Dakota)
Rhea, a Native American woman from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation (North and South Dakota) told Amnesty International about the experience of her friend, a 21-year-old Native American woman, who was raped and severely beaten by four men in February 2003.
She said her friend was initially brought to the Indian Health Service hospital in Fort Yates but was transferred to a hospital in Bismarck, North Dakota, in a critical condition, having taken an overdose of anti-diabetic medication that she found in the house where she had been raped with the apparent intention of committing suicide.
Rhea said: “she just lay there all beat up, with big black eyes.”
According to Rhea, a Standing Rock Police Department (SRPD) officer came to the hospital and questioned her friend while she could still talk. She died two weeks after the rape.
Rhea says she spoke to the police officer a year later; he told her the rape case was closed.
“The perpetrators are still walking around,” she told Amnesty International, “I don’t know why.”
The Chief of Police of SRPD told Amnesty International that they have been unable to find any record of the case.
Interview with Rhea, 2006 (details withheld)
Mother of a survivor of sexual violence from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation
The mother of a survivor of sexual violence from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation told Amnesty International how she returned home in September 2005 to find her 16-year-old daughter lying halfnaked and unconscious on the floor.
She took her daughter to the hospital in Mobridge, South Dakota, where a sexual assault forensic examination was performed. She described how the suspected perpetrator fled to Rapid City, South Dakota, which is outside the jurisdiction of the Standing Rock Police Department (SRPD).
He returned to the Reservation in early 2006 and was held by police for 10 days, although both mother and daughter only discovered this when they rang the SRPD to ask about the status of the case. They found out that the suspect was to go before a tribal court, but the mother told Amnesty International that to get this information, she had to go to Fort Yates and ask them in person. She told Amnesty International that she hoped that the case would be referred to the federal authorities because this would mean a lengthier sentence for the perpetrator. She said that, months after the attack, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officer and a BIA Special Investigator arrived unannounced. As the daughter was not home at the time, the mother told them where to find her. However, she never heard from them again. Federal prosecutors did eventually pick up the case and in December 2006 the perpetrator entered into a plea bargain and was awaiting sentencing at the time this report was written.
Interview with mother of survivor (identity withheld)
Village man arrested after eight-hour rampage, Nunam Iqua, Alaska
In October 2005, in the village of Nunam Iqua in Alaska, an Alaska Native man became violent, beating his wife with a shotgun and attempting to fire it at her and striking a friend in the head with the butt of another gun.
He then barricaded himself in a house with four children.
As the village had no law enforcement presence, residents called State Troopers (state police officers) in Bethel, 150 miles away, at 5.30 am to report the violence. Troopers had to charter a plane to get to the village because their own was being serviced and arrived at approximately 10 am.
A Trooper reported that, in the more than four hours it took them to reach the village, the man had raped a 13-year old Alaska Native girl on a bed with an infant crying beside her and her five-year-old brother and seven-year-old cousin watching.
After raping the girl, the man fired a shotgun, reportedly missing her by inches. The man faced 19 charges, including three counts of attempted murder, first-degree sexual assault and first-degree sexual abuse of a minor. In September 2006 he was convicted and sentenced to 27 years’ imprisonment, with 18 to be served and nine suspended.
“Village Man Arrested After Eight-Hour Rampage”, Anchorage Daily News, October 25, 2005
Cherokee woman living in Tahlequah, Oklahoma
Jami Rozell, a Cherokee woman living in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, told Amnesty International that she decided to seek prosecution five months after she was raped on state land in 2003.
After attending a preliminary hearing, it was revealed that her sexual assault forensic examination — including the sexual assault nurse examiner’s report, photographs, and the clothing she had been wearing — had been destroyed. She was told by the police department that the evidence had been destroyed as a routine part of cleaning their evidence storage room because she had initially declined to press charges. Because the evidence had been destroyed, the District Attorney advised her to drop the complaint.
An Alaska Native girl told Amnesty International that her sexual assault forensic examination was performed by a young white male doctor, even after she had asked for a woman. She said that the doctor told her that he had never done a sexual assault forensic examination before and asked her if this was the first time that she had been raped.
Interview (identity withheld), 24 May 2005
16-year-old Native American girl in Grand Forks, North Dakota
In May 2004, a man raped a 16-year-old Native American girl in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Her mother told Amnesty International that, although there was a warrant for the suspect’s arrest and although he had been in and out of jail on different charges, he was not arrested for the rape.
She said that after the suspect called her daughter in spring 2006, she repeatedly called the state prosecutor, seeking action on her daughter’s case. After numerous calls to the police by the mother, the perpetrator was eventually arrested in late 2006 and, following a plea bargain with prosecutors, received a five-year prison sentence, with three years suspended, followed by five years’ parole.
The mother told Amnesty International of her concerns about reporting the rape because of her experience in 1993 when her older daughter, who was 14 at the time, was raped on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana.
Tribal police were unwilling to take on the case and told her to contact the FBI in Great Falls, about 125 miles away. She said that although FBI agents met with her daughter several times, she felt they were not serious about pursuing the case; they never brought the suspect in for questioning and did not search his home for evidence for over a month. When she questioned the FBI about the case, she was told: “This case isn’t on the top of our list.”
Amnesty International interview (identity withheld), 2006
Amnesty International interview (details withheld)
An Indigenous woman told Amnesty International how in 2001 she was beaten and raped by a former boyfriend.
Her attacker went to the police and confessed that he had raped her three times and forced her to perform oral sex. As she was under 18 at the time of the rape, the crime constituted statutory rape under the law of the state where it took place. However, he was allowed to plead guilty to reduced charges and was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment of which he reportedly served a year and three months.
After the rape, the young woman reportedly engaged in increasingly self-destructive behavior. Her mother told Amnesty International that she begged the state authorities to provide her with a counselor, but to no avail. She said her daughter served a longer sentence for stealing and destroying a relative’s car than her attacker had for rape.
Amnesty International interview (details withheld), 2005
