Domestic Violence in Alaska is a series that explores the reach of Alaska’s funding to address domestic violence and show some areas where it succeeds, as well as where it falls short. The stories explore the ways that the state’s health, justice and education systems take on domestic violence’s lesser acknowledged effects. The Alaska Beacon is publishing the series with the support of the University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2023 Domestic Violence Impact Fund.
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With law enforcement sparse, Alaska villages build network of safety for survivors
Alaska is notoriously lacking in law enforcement for its remote communities, especially Alaska Native villages off the road system. These limitations put extra pressure on services in those communities to respond to violence after it happens, and a new program is aiming to help victims of violence. In Emmonak, a village of about 800 residents […]
Data links Alaska’s sky-high maternal mortality rate to domestic violence
Charlene Apok sat in front of multiple computer monitors in an Anchorage office and scrolled through a spreadsheet of missing and murdered Indigenous Alaskans. The neat boxes on the screen were labeled with things like name, date missing, location or cause of death, but Apok saw more — narrative lines of deep family love and […]
Housing vouchers free up space in Bethel’s domestic violence shelter
In Bethel, as with communities throughout the state, affordable housing for survivors of domestic violence is hard to find, especially for people who travel from smaller villages to access services at the shelter. This last year, for the first time, the state’s housing program had housing vouchers for the Bethel domestic violence shelter. The shelter […]
Domestic violence is feeding Alaska’s homelessness crisis
Domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness for women and their children. Alaska’s major cities are struggling to manage homelessness, especially in the winter, when the stakes for survival are even higher. And experts have identified domestic violence as one of the faucets that floods cities with homelessness. “Probably every woman in here has […]
Alaska does not have enough housing to keep survivors of domestic violence safe
After she left her abusive boyfriend, Brynn Butler also lost her apartment. Drug use is a common coping response to the trauma of unhealthy relationships and she said her addiction to methamphetamines “spiraled.” “It just snowballed into, pretty much I lost everything, right? I was staying at a trap house with my children who were […]
Alaska’s domestic violence council explores restorative justice methods in court sentencing
In a sunny room that faced towards the Gastineau Channel in Juneau, a group that included a city attorney, a Tribal employee, corrections officers and domestic violence advocates and survivors sat around a circle of desks to discuss how a new vision of justice could reduce domestic violence and increase public health in Alaska. A […]
Tribes, State Troopers increase access to justice for Alaska Native survivors of domestic violence
In remote parts of Alaska, justice and safety are hard for domestic violence survivors to access. Law enforcement is scarce and usually arrives after harm happens. But there is a tool that allows law enforcement officers to stop domestic violence before it starts: a domestic violence protective order. A domestic violence protective order, or DVPO, […]
Alaska pays millions to respond to domestic violence. Advocates want millions to prevent it.
When Kara Carlson experienced sexual assault as a teenager, she said it was traumatic but not shocking: “I was the last of my friends to experience sexual violence,” she said. “We live in this world where you have to prepare women for surviving trauma.” She now runs the women’s emergency shelter, Interior Alaska Center for […]
To prevent domestic violence, Alaska schools teach healthy relationships
By the end of the two-hour “healthy relationships” presentation, the seventh and eighth graders in the Anna Tobeluk Memorial School’s auditorium in Nunapitchuk were getting a little antsy. One girl popped a big, pink bubble on the top bleacher while short, animated videos demonstrated different teen interactions and asked students to gauge them on a […]
Alaska doctor wheels hope to survivors of traumatic brain injury in his ‘Brain Bus’
After a bike crash, Dr. Adam Grove noticed he wasn’t the same. He said he was depressed for the first time in his life, quick to anger and tired all the time. It was 1998 and he was not yet a doctor, but had just left the military and begun medical school. He was commuting […]
Advocates link Alaska’s high rate of traumatic brain injury with domestic violence
S. can’t remember how many times she has been hit in the head, but she remembers vividly the time she was choked. Those are two categories of injury she has survived over the course of her abusive marriages, and they are distinct because they can cause or contribute to traumatic brain injury. “I attract sociopaths, […]
Domestic Violence in Alaska: A crisis at home
T.’s relationship with her husband didn’t become violent until six months into her pregnancy with their first child. “Then it turned ugly. It was like a mask came off,” T. said. “He was free to say or do whatever he wanted because I was pregnant, and where was I going to go?” For safety reasons, […]