CDVSA Releases 2020 Alaska Victimization Survey Results

WASILLA — The Alaska Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault and the University of Alaska Anchorage Justice Center recently released the complete 2020 Alaska Victimization Survey.

This survey was conducted over the phone with 2,100 women in Alaska over the age of 18 who answered questions related to their experiences with physical and psychological intimate partner violence, stalking, and sexual violence.

According to the survey, an estimated 57.7 percent of Alaska women had experienced intimate partner violence (IPV), sexual violence (SV), or both during their lifetime. This was a 14.7 percent increase from the 2015 survey,

“This survey helps give voice to the hundreds of victims of violence across our diverse state,” Alaska CDVSA Executive Director L. Diane Casto stated in a recent press release. “With this data, policymakers are able to better align resources and to effect the areas most needed to end domestic and sexual violence in our state. We are indebted to the 2,100 women who invested time and relived these traumatic experiences by completing this survey to help all of us better understand the extent of intimate partner and sexual violence in Alaska.”

The survey also included new information on adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs.

Women with ACEs were much more likely to have experienced violence in their past than those without, according to the press release.

Women were also asked pandemic specific questions during the survey. The results indicated that those who were negatively impacted by COVID-19 in the form of unemployment, underemployment or a negative financial impact were significantly more likely to have experienced past-year IPV, SV, or both than those who were not impacted in those ways by COVID-19.

“The 2020 Alaska Victimization Survey is important because it allows us to continue monitoring trends in experiences with interpersonal violence and sexual violence over time in Alaska, but also because it includes new items, such as those on Adverse Childhood Experiences, COVID-19, as well as on how victim-survivors seek help and make sense of their experiences. The AVS will allow us to dig deeper into these experiences to better shape policy and practice,” UAA Justice Center Assistant Professor Ingrid D. Johnson, the Principal Investigator for the 2020 AVS state in the press release

For more information about the 2020 survey, visit dps.alaska.gov/CDVSA/Services/VictimServices.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reporter Jacob Mann at jacob.mann@frontiersman.com