On a mission; Local groups raising domestic violence awareness

PALMER — No More Mat-Su began Domestic Violence Awareness Month with a fun run to bring attention to this dire health and safety issue in Alaska.

“It’s incumbent upon all of us to bring awareness to this issue,” said Janel Gagnon, an adult advisor for No More Mat-Su.

Domestic violence is a person asserting their power and control over their partner through physical, mental and sexual abuse according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

In Alaska, domestic violence is a familiar issue. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic violence, 59 percent of Alaskan women experience intimate partner violence or sexual violence within their lifetimes. Additionally, Alaska has the highest rate of females murdered by males in the United States at, 3.96 per 100,000 from a 2017 analysis by the Violence Policy Center.

Though Alaska suffers from domestic violence, arguably more than any other state, each Alaskan regions’ severity varies greatly with at least one facet of domestic violence. For insistence, Alaska as a whole suffers from felony sex offences. In the Southcentral region, a 2017 report on felony sex offences by the Department of Public Safety found that about 46.4 people per 100,000 are victims of felony sex offences. On the other hand, Western Alaska has an exceedingly high rate at 410.1 victims per 100,000 people. That is 106 percent greater than the statewide rate which is nearly 200 victims per 100,000 people.

One possible answer for this comes from a study done by the Journal of Women’s Health. They studied the severity of intimate partner violence on women who lived in isolated, rural and urban areas, and found that women experienced a higher rate of IPV in isolated and rural communities than in urban communities. Those women that lived in rural and isolated communities had extreme difficulty accessing victim services unlike most of the women who lived in urban areas.

“We learn what we see so if our parents are abusive…we grow up to think that’s how relationships are unless someone intervenes,” said Heather Miller, the domestic violence and sexual assault program manager at Alaska Family Services. “So in isolated communities there’s going to be fewer people that can intervene and there is going to be fewer options for the victims to be able to escape the abusive relationships.”

Those options could be services for victims, or prevention-focused education. Learning about healthy relationships at an early age could possibly prevent bad habits forming, especially when a child’s environment is full of unhealthy role models, according to Miller. It’s also critical to have accessible education and resources like reliable telephone and internet connections. GCI began to update their networks in Western Alaska in 2011. The Terrestrial for Every Rural Region in Alaska network improves the internet infrastructure by replacing slow satellite connections for terrestrial cables.

AFS has served the Valley and many victims and families throughout Alaska since 1979. It’s 32-bed domestic violence and sexual assault shelter located in Palmer is the only nationally accredited center of its kind in Alaska, and they often care for victims from far outside the Southcentral Region. For victims from the local area, the sexual assault response team from AFS will respond to wherever the patient reported the incident whether it be at the emergency room, a medical provider, or to the authorities. From there, they would interview the victim and may offer a medical exam. After that, AFS may offer them shelter if the victim feels their home is not safe.

The Valley has resources like AFS and No More Mat-Su, of which AFS has programs to educate families and youth about healthy relationships. No More Mat-Su also actively has a presence in schools across the Valley. No More Mat-Su changed its operational structure by starting site-based groups in schools. This helps students join the organization and improves the efficiency of the group.

“I think that they realized that if there was ever going to be real change here in the Valley and in Alaska anywhere it was really going to have to start from younger generations,” said Gagnon.

Gagnon had suicide-prevention specialist Justin Pendergrass from My House, an organization that aims to end youth homelessness, speak to students at Colony Middle School. Pendergrass talked about suicide awareness and presented facts. According to Pendergrass, 100 percent of the homeless youth that have gone through My House have experienced domestic violence.

No More Mat-Su and AFS officials hope to work to decrease those statistics by educating future leaders. Along with their many programs that help educate families and victims on topics ranging from drugs and alcohol to childcare, AFS hopes to start a program that teaches girls about the signs of healthy relationships and to help build up their self-esteem.

While the Southcentral benefits from plentiful resources, some isolated communities struggle to have the basic needs to battle the statewide epidemic. In the western Alaskan community of Emmonak, the Emmonak Women’s Shelter had to file an emergency request in January of 2018 for emergency funding to Alaska’s Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. The shelter received no funds from the CDVSA from the previous fiscal year and depleted the slim federal funds. The shelter serves the 13 communities around that area which the CDVSA recognized its importance and granted their request and gave them $105,734 for emergency aid. While this saved the shelter, it only did so temporarily. The funds allowed the shelter to stay open through June 2018.

To contact the crisis line for AFS, call (907) 746-4080, or the toll-free number 1 (866) 746-4080.

Those in need of immediate response are asked to call 911.

Anthony Jones is a senior at Mat-Su Career and Technical High School and a Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman intern.