Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Monday, March 12, 2007
Rape most common among Native women
Native women report the highest number of rapes of any racial or ethnic group in the U.S., at a rate 2.5 times higher than the national average, according to a federal report.
And that’s just the ones who do report.
While more than 17 million women have been raped in their lifetime, according to the 2006 Department of Justice report, only 1 in 5 adult women ever tell police.
Norma Rendon, a woman’s advocate at the Cangleska shelter on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, has seen too many women blame themselves for being raped. Women need to understand it’s not their fault, she said, and take the crime to police.
“Too often, they are not being reported,” said Rendon, “There is so much shame that comes with being a victim.”
Alaska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Washington, Minnesota and Colorado — states with significant Native populations — also rank high in sexual assault rates in the country, the FBI reports.
The worldwide human rights organization Amnesty International has spent two years researching sexual assaults in urban and reservation areas. Organization officials will hold a press conference April 24 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the day before Amnesty plans to release its report, “USA: Maze of Injustice — The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence.”
Women advocates agree assault rates continue to escalate. Already, 1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime, according to a 1999 report from the Bureau of Justice statistics.
Tess Curley, on Montana’s Flathead Reservation, especially is concerned that while assault rates appear to be going up, the ages are going down: 33 percent of the rapes happened when the victim was age 12 to 17.
“It’s increasing more, especially on our reservation,” said Curley, who works for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ crime-victim advocate program. “And they are beginning to target our youth. The positive thing is they (girls) are coming in and reporting this more and saying, ‘This happened to me.’”
Though the statute of limitations can vary from state to state, Montana allows women up to 10 years to report a rape. For a girl or teen, that 10-year period starts from her 18th birthday.
The Cangleska shelter hired its first full-time worker in February to work specifically with sexual assault victims on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where women in the past have had to drive 120 miles for aid in Rapid City, S.D., now ranked fourth in the nation for most rapes per capita.
The shelter has since acquired rape kits to collect samples from victims and to fill out reports.
“In many of the cases, they were raped in our border towns,” said Rendon, referring to communities near the reservation. U.S. Justice Department statistics indicate the majority of violent crimes against Native women are committed by white men.
Not only is it important to report sexual assaults, women should seek a support group, said Rendon. Mothers also are encouraged to consider how physical and sexual assaults against them affects their children.
A National Institute of Justice report shows 64 percent of children had witnessed abuse against their mothers by age 3. Youths ages 12-18 of sexually abused mothers showed more depression and had more behavioral problems than children of mothers who had not been sexually assaulted.
Rebecca St. George, a woman’s advocate with Mending the Sacred Hoop in Duluth, Minn., is working with local police on documenting sexual assaults.
She also counts herself among the victims.
“I was raped a couple of times,” St. George said. “The first time I was at a party. I had never had sex before. I went with a guy to his car to get some beer. It was cold in northern Minnesota. He invited me to the front seat of his car and he raped me. I was shocked and confused and didn’t even identify it as rape until three years later.”
The Ojibwe woman said she was raped a second time after drinking too much alcohol and passing out. Sexual intercourse without consent is rape, she noted, but added, “It never occurred to me to report any of those to anyone.”
While she didn’t go to the police, St. George said reporting a rape can be therapeutic. “For some women, it’s incredibly healing just to get the guy charged, whether there’s a prosecution or not,” she said. “It’s powerful to make a public statement that, ‘What he did to me is wrong.’
“By my silence, I certainly allowed them to continue,” she said. “It’s not a guilt thing, but it’s true. I didn’t do anything to stop them from raping the next person.”
Jodi Rave can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at jodi.rave@lee.net.
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