Tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs will hold an oversight hearing looking at the Federal government's failure to prosecute crimes in Indian Country. Amnesty International, which last year issued the report Maze of Injustice: the failure to protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA [see link on right side of this page], is submitting written testimony about the issue(attached). Renata Rendon, Americas Advocacy Director for Amnesty International USA, will attend the hearing and can be reached for interviews or more information at 202/544-0200 or 646/269-1152.
This is good news!! Perhaps now women in Indian Country will start to have the same protection under the law as the rest of the women in this country.
Here is the Amnesty testimony:
Declining to Prosecute: The Failure to Protect Native Women from Sexual Violence in the United States
“To a sexual predator, the failure to prosecute sex crimes against American Indian women is an invitation to prey with impunity.” - Dr. David Lisak, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Massachusetts
In April 2007 Amnesty International released a report entitled “Maze of Injustice: The failure to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA”. Research on the sexual assault and rape of Native American women was initiated upon learning of U.S. Department of Justice statistics indicating that Native American and Alaska Native women are more than 2.5 times more likely than other women in the United States to be raped. According to these statistics, more than 1 in 3 Native American and Alaska Native women will be raped in their lifetimes, and 86 percent of the perpetrators of these crimes are non-Native men.
In order to achieve justice, Native American survivors of sexual violence frequently have to navigate a maze of tribal, state and federal law. Currently, tribal courts do not have authority to prosecute non-Native perpetrators meaning that only federal prosecutors can pursue such cases. Amnesty International’s research suggests that prosecutions for crimes of sexual violence against Native American women are rare in federal courts.
The lack of comprehensive and centralized data collection by federal agencies renders it impossible to obtain accurate statistics about prosecution rates for crimes of sexual violence against Native women. Amnesty International sent questionnaires to the 93 individual US Attorneys who prosecute crimes within Indian Country at the federal level seeking information on prosecution rates for crimes of sexual violence committed against Native American women. Amnesty International was informed by the Executive Office of US Attorneys that individual US attorneys would not be permitted to participate in the survey. The Executive Office for US Attorneys did provide Amnesty International with a list of some of the cases of sexual violence arising in Indian Country that had been prosecuted in recent years. Of the 84 cases provided, only 20 involved adult women. The remaining cases mostly involved children. In the cases listed, prosecutions for sexual violence against adult Native American women took place in only eight of the 93 districts, and only Arizona and South Dakota saw more than two.
While data on sexual violence specifically from Indian Country is not compiled, from October 1, 2002 to September 30, 2003, federal prosecutors declined to prosecute 60.3 per cent of sexual violence cases. These statistics include all cases involving Native and non-Native victims, nevertheless, the numbers provide some indication of the extent to which these crimes go unpunished. Significantly, between 2000 and 2003, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was consistently among the investigating agencies with the highest percentage of cases declined by federal prosecutors.
Congress should develop comprehensive plans of action to stop violence against American Indian women and ensure that survivors have access to justice.
Key Recommendations:
* Federal authorities should, in consultation with Native American peoples, collect and publish detailed and comprehensive data on rape and other sexual violence that shows the Indigenous or other status of victims and perpetrators and the localities where such offences take place, the number of cases referred for prosecution, the number declined by prosecutors and the reasons why.
* Prosecutors should vigorously prosecute cases of sexual violence against Native American women, and should be sufficiently resourced to ensure that the cases are treated with the appropriate priority and processed without undue delay. Any decision not to proceed with a case, together with rationale for the decision, should be promptly communicated to the survivor of sexual violence and any other prosecutor with jurisdiction.
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