This was a story I caught while listening to NPR this summer, and it really disturbed me: Part 1, Part 2.
Did you know that sexual assault occurs every 2.5 minutes in this country? And if you are a Native American woman, your chances of being sexually assaulted are two and a half times higher than other women. The legal system is useless to capture and convict these felons because of complicated legal rules and bureaucratic inertia concerning tribal land and who has jurisdiction. So Native American women who are raped by white men are basically ignored.
One day recently at the Chickasaw police headquarters, a call came in from a Native American woman who said she had been raped and didn’t know where she was….
If the woman is Indian on Indian land with an Indian attacker, he can help her. If not, there’s often little he can do – and he says that’s usually the case. According to a Justice Department report, 80 percent of Indian victims describe their attackers at non-native.
“Many of the criminals know Indian lands are almost a lawless community, where they can do whatever they want,” O’Neal said.
In this case on this day, the woman turns up outside of tribal land, which means he cannot intervene and won’t know what happened to her.
What’s the deal? Can’t we do better?
