Men can do more to stop violence in villages

The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica spent the year reporting on a public safety crisis in rural Alaska. Amid the coverage, U.S. Attorney General William Barr declared the problems to be a national emergency.

What comes next? We asked Alaska public officials, law enforcement and village residents for their specific suggestions for improving public safety. Read all the responses here.

I’ve been involved in social services and health care my entire career in Alaska. So you’ll excuse me if I tell you how tired I am of hearing about all the programs that are going to be funded to prevent sexual and physical abuse in our villages. While some may have worked a little, most don’t work at all. Women still flee if possible to Anchorage or Fairbanks to get away from it, only to find that it can be hard in those cities to stay safe too. More money for rural policing doesn’t help in small villages where hiring a full-time officer is simply not feasible.

So the violence continues in the villages as help continues to be miles away by air. In our smaller villages especially, there is no safe home if someone is drunk or drugged and determined to do damage, determined to somehow shred the fabric of the community.

You know how to stop that kind of violence in the villages? By making it unacceptable with more than just words at a meeting or declarations from some health corporation or municipal government or another police officer being asked to do the impossible. And that level of unacceptability can only happen when the men of the village get involved on a very public and vocal level.

This is not about signing pledges. Words on paper are worth nothing if no true actions back them up. And the actions that should be taken need to be public and loud. Very loud.

The good men in any village need to visibly turn away from their cousin or brother or buddy who beats his wife up. They need to publicly tell an abuser that they want nothing to do with him if he doesn’t change. They should not allow him to run for city council, apply to be the Village Public Safety Officer or be their hunting buddy. Good men in the villages need to cut abusers from their personal lives, their village life and their friendships – in other words, they need to shun them so that life in the village becomes isolated, impossible, humiliating and unbearable for abusers. Those men can then make the choice to change their ways, leave their village or live a life of isolation.

Will this stop a lot of men from being abusers? Probably not. But it will let them know that they are no longer free to wreak havoc in their villages without consequences that can be felt on a daily basis. Everyone knows who they are because they see their sisters, mothers, aunts, and nieces walking around bruised and scared all the time. These women aren’t hard to spot. I could see them coming a mile away after very few months in the field of social work.

So let’s publicly out and humiliate ever abuser in every village. While women can do this, they risk extreme physical harm if they do unless they are backed up by the good men in their village. Men need to become leaders in this kind of campaign because they are a large part of what keeps abusers abusing – no fear of any real repercussions.

I am sick and tired of the days when a man could violate his family at night and sit on the city council the next day. And so should every man and woman in this state who has watched this abuse continue unabated for decades without any hope of it ending.

You want to be a real man? Stand up for your women in the most public places in your village by totally cutting to the quick any abuser who dares to say hello to you or who thinks of you as a friend.

Your reluctance to confront them publicly gives them permission to keep abusing. If you want to give the women in your village the best Christmas present ever, then stop allowing abusers to be a part of your village life. Speak up. Speak loudly. Speak publicly. Just speak – and not in front of a crowd at AFN but in the face of an abuser in the middle of your village.

Elise Sereni Patkotak is the author of two memoirs about her life in Alaska, both available at AlaskaBooksandCalendars.com and at local bookstores.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.