The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #103601 Message #2113013
Posted By: katlaughing
27-Jul-07 - 07:53 PM
Thread Name: BS: Rape on Reservations
Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
American Indians and Alaska Natives experienced the worst rate of violent crime in the nation in 2000, according to a Department of Justice study. Natives were victimized at a rate of 52.3 per 1,000, twice the rate reported by Hispanics (27.9 per 1,000) and whites (26.5) and one and one-half times that of African-Americans (34.1), according to Bureau of Justice statistics.
meself, you may have missed this:
According to the US Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of the reported cases of rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women, survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men.
Here's page 2 of the 8 page article I posted the link for:
The results of the statutes and Supreme Court opinions is a confusing maze of jurisdictional responsibility that paralyzes effective law enforcement on reservations. The FBI, the BIA, the state police, the local county sheriff's office, and the tribal police all have limited jurisdiction over crimes committed on Indian reservations, and it is not unusual to have all five agencies involved in at least the initial investigation of a single crime. But each agency's jurisdiction is so limited that violent criminals often fall through the cracks and avoid arrest, particularly if they happen to be white.
For instance, if a person is assaulted on a reservation, that crime is usually handled by the tribal police. But if the person assaulted is not a member of the tribe, the tribal police have no jurisdiction and the local police must be called in--if they are willing to investigate in the first place. Or if it is determined that the victim was sexually assaulted, the tribal police must hand the case over to the BIA police. And if the victim later dies, it becomes a murder case, which can be handled only by the FBI.
In one case, a non-Indian living on the Navajo Reservation repeatedly broke into the house of his ex-wife, a Navajo, and assaulted her. "When she called the tribal police for help, she was told that they couldn't help her because they didn't have jurisdiction over the crime," recalled her lawyer, Donna Chavez. Advertisement
The woman then called the county sheriff's office begging for help. She was told that nothing could be done to help her because the sheriff's office did not have jurisdiction over crimes committed on the reservation. Finally, Chaez, went to the BIA to see if their agents could do something to prevent the repeated beating of her client. After looking into exactly who had jurisdiction over the crimes, the BIA eventually decided that the woman could file a complaint with the federal magistrate in Flagstaff, almost 200 dusty miles from her home. "As it turned out, the complaint was never filed with the magistrate in Flagstaff, which is what happens in a large majority of the cases where Navajos are victimized on the reservations by non-Indians," Chavez said.
In another case reported in The Christian Science Monitor, the local police arrested a man for raping a woman on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. They could not charge the man with rape because in South Dakota only FBI agents or BIA police are empowered to charge a suspect accused of commiting a felony covered under the Major Crimes Act. The local authorities charged the man with public drunkenness in order to hold him until the federal authorities arrived. But anyone jailed on a minor charge has a right to bail or to a "temporary release" for time to pay his fine. The day after the arrest the man was out on a "TR." A young Sioux jailer shrugged, commenting with a bitter smile, "Of course, what it really means is that if the guy wants to sky out and go to places unknown, he can."