Anchorage Daily News

Alaska congressional candidate Diane Benson, a survivor of repeated sexual assaults, said Monday a major focus of her campaign will be to help other women overcome violence and indifference.She said a specialist helped with her post-traumatic stress disorder from the attacks. But other women don't have the money or access to get the help they need.

"What if there was no place for me to turn when the nightmares finally caught up with me and consumed my life?" Benson said at her campaign headquarters in Midtown Anchorage. "Would I be standing here today? Not likely."

Benson is one of three Democrats running for Alaska Republican Don Young's U.S. House seat. She said her campaign changed a lot after a Daily News story last week in which she spoke about being raped. Benson had talked about it at justice conferences for years, and was on a panel at an Anchorage conference on fighting violence against Native women.

Benson said she didn't intend for it to come up in the campaign and had not expected media coverage of the conference; she spoke to a reporter after the conference and gave permission for her story to be told. The revelations were painful, Benson said, but people called her campaign to thank her for speaking out.

Now that her story is widely known, she wants to use her campaign make a difference, she said.

Benson called a press conference Monday at her campaign office to talk about it. Alaskan rape survivors and support-group leaders joined her, as did women by conference call from the national "Women are Sacred" conference being held in Arizona.

Benson said she was abused while growing up in foster care and later raped three times.

"I was raped twice as a teenager and I was raped at the age of 20," Benson said. "I was raped at knife point in a parking lot, I was raped and shot at in Fairbanks, a pellet catching me in the leg ... in all those cases for me, no one did any time for the crime, nothing happened to the perpetrators."

She said Fairbanks police believed the attacker's story when she tried to report that rape and shooting, which happened she was 18. A Ketchikan officer wanted her for himself when she reported an attempted rape there when she was a young teenager, she said.

MONEY FOR SHELTERS

Benson, who is Tlingit, said Native women keep getting raped and killed.

"I had a friend named Wanda, who came from the Ahtna region. And I got to see her body after I'd just been with her hours before, on camera. And I recognized her shoes before I knew anything else. And no justice," Benson said.

It's been going on in Alaska for decades, she said, through generations. Benson's niece stood with her at the press conference and said she was a survivor of repeated sexual assaults as well.

Benson said more funding for shelters is needed, working through federal, state and tribal agencies. She gave the example of the women's shelter in the village of Emmonak, which lost its state funding in 2005.

For months the shelter was closed but women still came to it, huddling on the porch or hiding out back, said Lynn Hootch, who is the executive director of the shelter. Hootch said the shelter is operating again - but mainly only during daytime hours - with federal grant money that also must be stretched to operate tribal courts.

Benson said better state-tribal relations and more funding for crisis centers, educating law enforcement, drug and alcohol treatment, mental health and other programs would help the violence crisis in the state.

Juana Majel of the National Conference of American Indians was listening to Benson's remarks by conference call. She said the NCAI will work to help create change in Alaska, and will take it up at its midyear conference in June.

EMPOWERING WOMEN

Alaskan rape survivors told their own stories at Benson's press conference.

Theresa Sheppard, who works the front desk at Standing Together Against Rape, said the last time she was assaulted was in a place where she thought she would be safe for sure: the Bethel hospital.

It was almost five years ago. She was being treated for stomach problems when a drunk man somehow made it through security to her room.

Sheppard said in a later interview that many people don't know what to say. The Yup'ik culture says don't talk about it. She thinks it's time to get the words out, to acknowledge the truth, to deal with it.

"It hurts to talk about it. At least I don't cry anymore. But if it will help somebody out there to talk ..."

The Daily News usually does not identify victims of sex crimes, but Sheppard said the paper could use her name.

Benson said part of her own decision to speak out is "blowing the lid off this label of victim."

"I'm running (for Congress) regardless of all this stuff that's happened to me," Benson said. "And other women should start to get the message they too could be empowered to go on, that life is possible."

Find Sean Cockerham online at adn.com/contact/scockerham or call him at 257-4344. Find Lisa Demer at adn.com/contact/ldemer or 257-4390.

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