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If you thought getting rapes prosecuted by the state was a difficult process…

zuzu

You might want to thank your lucky stars you don’t live on a reservation.

Native American and Alaska Native women in the United States suffer disproportionately high levels of rape and sexual violence, yet the federal government has created substantial barriers to accessing justice, Amnesty International (AI) asserted in a 113-page report released today. Justice Department figures indicate that American Indian and Alaska Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than women in the United States in general; more than one in three Native women will be raped in their lifetimes.

The United States government has created a complex maze of tribal, state and federal jurisdictions that often allows perpetrators to rape with impunity — and in some cases effectively creates jurisdictional vacuums that encourage assaults. It is necessary to establish the location of the crime and the identity of the perpetrator to determine which authorities have jurisdiction, during which critical time is lost. This leads to inadequate investigations or a failure to respond.

Further complications are the lack of trained Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANEs) at Indian Health Service (IHS) facilities to provide forensic exams, and the potential for law enforcement to mishandle evidence when rape kits are used. The result is that Native women often:

Do not get timely – or any – response from police.
May not get forensic medical examinations.
May never see their cases prosecuted.

“Native women are brutalized at an alarming rate, and the United States government, a purported champion of women’s rights, is unfortunately contributing to the problem,” said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). “It is disgraceful that such abuse even exists today. Without immediate action, an already abysmal and outrageous situation for women could spiral even further out of control. It is time to halt these human rights abuses that have raged unfettered since this country was founded.”

The AI report, Maze of Injustice: The failure to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA, warned that government figures, as disturbing as they are, grossly underestimate the problem because many women are too fearful of inaction to report their cases. According to one Oklahoma support worker, of 77 active sexual assault/domestic violence cases involving Native American women, only three victims reported their cases to the police.

The U.S. Government has undermined the authority of tribal justice systems to respond to crimes of sexual violence by consistent under-funding. Federal law limits the criminal sentences that tribal courts can impose for any one offense to one year and prohibits tribal courts from trying non-Indian suspects — even though data collected by the Department of Justice shows that up to 86 percent of perpetrators are non-Indian.

In addition, AI’s research suggests that there is a failure at the state and federal level to pursue cases of sexual violence against Native women involving non-Indian perpetrators. One former federal prosecutor told AI, “It is hard to prosecute cases where there is a Native American victim and a non-Native American perpetrator.” Once a case is denied at the state or federal level, there is no further recourse for survivors of rape under criminal law.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip, Liberality.

9 thoughts on If you thought getting rapes prosecuted by the state was a difficult process…

  1. Sad.

    I lived on a military base, and based on that experience I can definitely see this occuring. On base, I was unable despite diligent effort to get a restraining order against my repeat-offender abusive husband. While a lot of that had to do with the culture of the military, it was further complicated by the fact that the local and state law enforcement had no jurisdiciton, and the federal laws didn’t seem to have specific regulations governing domestic abuse. With no real rules against it, these guys walk. And once they realize that no one will stop their bad behavior, they become empowered. If the woman complains, they are labeled a bitch. The “trained social workers” were incredibly backward about how they handled it (asking me things like… “well what did you do to make him so mad?”).

  2. Federal Indian Law is extremely complicated when it comes to jurisdiction for criminal offenses. Tribes can only punish Native Americans for crimes committed against other Native Americans, and they can only impose a sentence of 1 year in jail and $5,000 fine for each offense. This is true for rape, assault, and even murder. Tribes tend to punish offenders for lesser crimes and have the sentences run back to back instead of concurrently in order to punish offenders for longer than a year.

    So, you would be wrong to say that you should be glad that you don’t live on a reservation. The state or federal government always has jurisdiction over an offense committed against a non-native woman. The real key is that native women on reservations must know the status of the offender in order to determine jurisdiction.

  3. Limiting the tribal courts to ONE YEAR for ANY criminal offense?

    I think America generally punishes its citizens too harshly, but that’s just beyond ridiculous.

  4. Yup. A max of one year and $5000 for any criminal offense. (Basically, tribal courts can only sentence for misdemeanors.)

    Of course, that’s assuming that there is a tribal court. Most tribes don’t have the infrastructure for a court system.

    The states and the federal government have been in a “no, you take them!” jurisdictional war for quite a while. The result has been devastating on family law, property law, and criminal law. Rape is just one aspect of a much larger problem — the law makes it way too easy for states and the federal government to just forget that natives exist. (Or better yet, to write laws decreeing that they don’t exist.)

    And everyone knows that IHS sucks, rape counselors or no. At least they aren’t sterilizing native women involuntarily like they did in the 1970s. (Or are they? hmmmmmmmm?)

  5. You know, I read people’s comments about how women “sometimes lie” about being raped, and then I look at stuff like this and I think “Are you fucking kidding me?” Women, especially African American and indigenous women, are treated like absolute crap in this country, and yet everyone keeps talking about how much better “We” are than other countries when it comes to women’s status. It makes me sick. I feel so useless, sitting here at my computer. I wish there was some sort of shelter or home I could volunteer at, some way I could help. I wonder if the link posted by Judith above is one small way….

  6. You know, I read people’s comments about how women “sometimes lie” about being raped, and then I look at stuff like this and I think “Are you fucking kidding me?” Women, especially African American and indigenous women, are treated like absolute crap in this country, and yet everyone keeps talking about how much better “We” are than other countries when it comes to women’s status. It makes me sick. I feel so useless, sitting here at my computer. I wish there was some sort of shelter or home I could volunteer at, some way I could help. I wonder if the link posted by Judith above is one small way….

  7. So, you would be wrong to say that you should be glad that you don’t live on a reservation. The state or federal government always has jurisdiction over an offense committed against a non-native woman. The real key is that native women on reservations must know the status of the offender in order to determine jurisdiction.

    I stand corrected, Dorotha. Good lord, that’s so much worse than I thought.

  8. I worked as a physician for a primarily Native American community and the physical sexual abuse against women and children was shocking. More horrendous was how the abuser was often a respected member of society and the tribal police would treat him as such. Ergo, offenders often were not prosecuted or more often, women would not report the offenses against them. There was a lot of “turning the other cheek.”

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