From Maureen - thanks
Tribes work to help female sexual assault victims
By TRAVIS COLEMAN / Lee Enterprises
Monday, May 28, 2007 - 12:20:33 am CDT


http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2007/05/28/news/nebraska/doc465a22fc25aaa201\
245461.txt

SIOUX CITY, Iowa — Before she turned 21, Michaelene DeCora had been raped twice
and molested as a child.

The now 43-year-old Winnebago woman said she didn’t report the incidents because
she didn’t think anything would happen to the men.

She said tribal police officers didn’t have the ability to handle a sexual
assault report and there were no other victims’ services on the Winnebago Indian
Reservation in northeast Nebraska.

Twenty years later, not much has changed. There still aren’t any services, and
local advocacy groups in Winnebago and on the nearby Omaha Indian Reservation
are struggling to get sexual assault programs off the ground.

Meanwhile, Native women continue to be sexually assaulted.

According to a recent study by Amnesty International, 34 percent of Native women
— or one out of three — have been sexually assaulted. For all other women in the
U.S., it’s one out of every five.

DeCora, who now works as a volunteer at Winnebago Domestic Violence Intervention
and Family Preservation, believes the actual number of rapes on reservations are
higher because they often aren’t reported.

In Winnebago, DeCora said, nine out of 10 women have been sexually assaulted in
some way but are too ashamed to talk about it.

The April Amnesty report, “Maze of Injustice,” attributes that high rate of
sexual assaults to limited government funding and confusion in tribal and county
jurisdictions on reservations.

But now, two groups on the Winnebago and Omaha reservations have stopped waiting
for help and are working to fight the problem.

“They say our women are sacred. So treat us like that,” DeCora said.

Winnebago domestic violence program director Elizabeth White applied for a U.S.
Department of Justice grant in February to help fund a shelter for sexual
assault victims along with educational programs for the community.

Currently, victims on the Winnebago and Omaha reservations aren’t offered
services like trauma counseling or a change of clothes. Because of a lack of
funding, nurses at Winnebago Indian Hospital aren’t certified to use rape kit
exams, White said.

And if they’re caught, perpetrators aren’t held accountable for their crimes to
the fullest extent because there isn’t a jail in Winnebago.

According to the report, none of the three justice systems found on reservations
— federal, state or tribal — are helping victims get justice from non-Native
perpetrators, who commit 86 percent of the reported sexual assaults on Native
women.

The report blames the federal government for failing to fund tribal justice
systems, prohibiting tribal courts from trying non-Native suspects and limiting
sentences that tribal courts can impose.

The failure to secure justice is what victims fear, White said. They’re also
embarrassed because in small communities, stories spread quickly.

Services are available at the Council on Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence in
Sioux City, Iowa, but victims don’t want to leave the reservation because they
fear their abusers may vandalize their homes, White said.

Victims would rather pretend it never happened, she said.

But she can’t and neither can the members of the nonprofit Omaha Nation
Community Response Team in Walthill.

“We have had a high rate of domestic violence and sexual assault,” said Gwen
Porter, Rainmaker project director. “It’s getting to the point where our people
are believing it’s a norm. It’s just been overlooked.”

The Omaha Indian Reservation doesn’t have enough police officers to combat the
problem, Porter said. In that absence, the response team is focused on educating
the nearly 5,000 reservation residents about sexual assault, as well as about
its other community healing projects.

“We need to get our community educated so we can help ourselves … so that we can
better our future, which happens to be our children,” said Gloria Grant-Gone, a
response team member.

By July, the response team hopes to have a grant to help fund a shelter. They’re
also working with Omaha tribal leaders to update the tribe’s sexual assault
laws.

DeCora is on the front lines of this battle in Winnebago, taking part in talking
circles with victims.

If victims are able to talk about their experiences, they can start healing
themselves, DeCora said, and start to help others.

“When you’re sexually abused, it affects you your whole life as an adult,” she
said. “If you hold that inside, it makes you sick.

“If they can start to talk about it, that’s a huge step. I want them to know
they can heal from it.”
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