Last week the Municipality of Anchorage released a report on rape and sexual violence in the community. Standing Together Against Rape (STAR) would like to thank the Anchorage Department of Health and Human Services for compiling this data, and extend those thanks to the Anchorage Police Department, Forensic Nursing Services of Providence, and Alaska Child Abuse Response and Evaluation Services (CARES).

The data compiled outlines occurrences of reported rapes and sexual assaults within our city. There is a lot of information about who is being victimized, but very little about the offenders, unless to note they were drinking or using drugs at the time of the incident.

The sheer numbers are alarming, startling, and reflect a side of Anchorage not surprising to those of us at STAR. Sadly, behind each of the statistics is a story of pain, degradation, and trauma. By simply reviewing the numbers, it is easy to forget each person affected by rape and abuse has a lasting impact on all those around them, whether made aware of the rape or not.

Trauma is life threatening and mind-altering. One has to realize on some level during a traumatic event that the physical body and mind will never be the same again. Trauma changes a person’s life and forever afterwards, that person is struggling to find a “new normal” because frankly, their lives will never again be what they were.

So the vast numbers of those affected by rape are triangulated throughout the community of Anchorage. The traumatic event will have a very real impact on the person’s work, school, family, friends, and significant others. Even if the rape is never disclosed, it does not escape notice. One’s functioning cannot go on as it once did. Relationships cannot remain the same, even if that is one’s wish. That wish was denigrated along with the individual’s right to consent.

Fear, distrust, difficulty experienced in developing or continuing a meaningful intimate relationship, all compounded by a society which blames the victim for being vulnerable to attack.

A public health model as response to interpersonal violence is a good one. STAR has been welcomed in the Anchorage School District for years (thanks, Carol Comeau, for your foresight) providing age-appropriate risk prevention strategies to children and teens. The education effort is intended to help those most vulnerable for sexual assault and abuse, but also to provide alternatives to those at high risk for offending. Unfortunately, funding education around risk-reduction goes in and out of vogue like the tide. One year STAR’s Education program is funded, the next it faces a reduction in force.

The only word of caution for the Public Health Model is to refrain from even subtly blaming the victim for violence perpetrated by an offender.

Recent research shared with STAR* indicates only 3% of sex offenders are ever arrested. Of those, only about 5% ever spend a day in jail. Sex offender registries provide a false sense of security, since most sex offenders in our community are not known as such to the criminal legal system.

Other disturbing news comes from sex offenders themselves. A long-range study of convicted sex offenders subjected to polygraph testing in prison shows they admit to having a low average of 120 victims over the course of their lifetime, although they are generally in prison for an arrest associated with just one victim. They also report not discriminating much between genders, or between children and adults.

A public health model designed to prevent offending, instead of preventing victimization is the only way to see drastic reduction in the rates of rape in Anchorage.

*Russell Strand, chief of the U.S. Army Military Police School Family Advocacy Law Enforcement Training Program and nationally recognized speaker on sex offenders

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Keeley Olson is the program director for Standing Together Against Rape in Anchorage. She has worked in a variety of positions to assist survivors of domestic and sexual violence, both in social service and government agencies.

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