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Two years ago, the Atlantic Monthly published an investigative story entitled Rape Culture in the Alaskan Wilderness. It was a frank piece about the state's horrific rate of sexual assault, where the rape rate is almost three times the national average, and where "for child sexual assault, it's nearly six times."
Moreover, Alaskan women of native ancestry reported even higher rates.
That article came to mind again recently with the October report from Alberta's child and youth advocate, Del Graff, on a four-year-old girl, Serenity (identified by the pseudonym Marie in his report). The First Nations child died in September 2014, after one year in the care of relatives. The grandparents were checked for a criminal record; others living at their residence were not.
Soon after placement, Serenity and two siblings were reported to have "unexplained marks, bruises and scratches and appeared malnourished." One year on, the grandmother took Serenity to the hospital, again claiming a fall; Serenity died one week later.
Postmedia News obtained emergency room notes which lay bare the abuse that Serenity endured. Columnist Paula Simons crystallized the abuse of Serenity with four depressing words: "Her hymen was gone."
In his report, Graff wrote of how Serenity "and her family . . . lived primarily on, or near their First Nation." Such information may be relevant, or not, to the abuse and death of Serenity. At a minimum, sexual assault on First Nations is a problem, according to aboriginal women who have come forward in recent months to state just that.
In August, CBC Radio interviewed "Deborah" from Vanderhoof, B.C., (her last name was not provided) who explained the dynamic and why exposing sexual assault is problematic: "There's a really strong no-talk culture on First Nations reserves where people know things are going on," but they don't talk about it lest they become targets themselves.
When two young girls came to her for help and she brought the matter to the courts, she herself was targeted — someone tried to burn down her house.
Earlier this month, Freda Ens, now 59, told The Canadian Press how when she was a child in B.C.'s Masset village, she had been raped by relatives. Ens urged others to come forward to talk about it, otherwise, "We are covering it up."
Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, is commendable when he says that native leaders have an obligation "to expose this to the light of day."
If, similar to Alaska, Canada's reserves are one day found to have rates of sexual assault higher than elsewhere in the country — and that is not clear from current data — it would be a mistake to conclude there is something unique here to First Nations.
Instead, it is better to learn from past sexual abuse scandals about what factors might allow predators to remain unchallenged.
One ingredient is power. Think of principals in (some) residential schools of yesteryear.
There is also the notion of the sacred: think of the priests in decades past in (some) parishes where parishioners were reluctant to out such individuals.
Then add in a remote location and/or a small community where everyone knows everyone else. All of it makes outing perpetrators difficult.
This combination is in danger of being ignored again: Governance on some reserves, especially remote, which gives too much power to a few; a reluctance to appear critical of anything that touches on aboriginal life given historic, awful mainstream treatment of First Nations; lastly, the risk that identifying a problem on some reserves will be wrongly assumed as representative of all reserves.
The concerns are legitimate. But when First Nations women ask for sexual assault on reserves to be exposed, we owe them, and possible past victims, to say nothing of potential future ones, that frank discussion.
Mark Milke is a Calgary writer.


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Fact-Checking AOL Chief's Health-Care Claims
When AOL CEO Tim Armstrong explained cuts to employees' 401(k) plans last week by blaming high medical costs, particularly those related to two "distressed babies," he didn't name names.
But one parent refused to let Armstrong have the last word—and in the process, took the unusual step of openly criticizing her husband's employer on a public platform.
Over the weekend – shortly after Armstrong apologized for his remarks and reversed course on the 401(k) changes – Deanna Fei, a novelist whose husband is as an editor at AOL's Huffington Post website, came forward as the mother of one of the babies presumably referred to by Armstrong.
In Slate, Fei wrote a deeply personal account of her daughter's premature birth in 2012. She said she took issue not with Armstrong's estimation that her baby's post-natal interventions cost a million dollars or more but with "how he exposed the most searing experience of our lives, one that my husband and I still struggle to discuss with anyone but each other, for no other purpose than an absurd justification for corporate cost-cutting."

subset: commoncrawl


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Sentencing postponed for former Deefield chief's wife in $250k theft from her disabled veteran fatherStaff Report
March 24. 2014 8:03PM
CONCORD — Sentencing is scheduled for May 16 in U.S. District Court for a Newfields woman who stole more than $250,000 from her father, a disabled veteran who lives in Florida.
Amy Greeley, 43, a former school teacher and state education department disability examiner, pleaded guilty Sept. 30, 2013, to spending the Veterans Administration payments. She admitted forging documents to convince the VA the money was being invested for her father, whose housing and medical care are provided by the VA.
Greeley is the wife of former Deerfield Police Chief Michael Greeley, who retired Dec. 31, 2013. He is not accused of having any knowledge of Greeley's theft.
Federal public defender Jeffrey Levin seeks three years of probation for Greeley, with the first year on home confinement, saying she has many medical needs that couldn't be met in federal prison.
He also argues her husband and her daughter, who is married with two children, need her to be at home and/or available to them and submitted a number of letters from family and friends praising Greeley for the support she has provided to them.
Levin said Greeley is remorseful and only stole the money because she and her husband were "working very hard but barely making ends meet."
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Feith disputes that. He said Greeley was earning $45,809 per year from 2005 through 2008 as a teacher and her husband, Michael Greeley, as Deerfield chief, was presumably making at least as much as the average Deerfield police officer compensation of $42,000.
Feith argued that with a combined income of more than $87,000 a year, a family of four (both Amy and Michael have a daughter from a previous marriage) could have maintained a comfortable lifestyle.
Instead, he argued, it appears Amy Greeley chose a lifestyle she could not afford and financed it with her father's money.
Feith said Greeley should be sentenced to 24 months in prison. He said Greeley committed theft over a long period and only felt remorse after her scheme was discovered.
According to the plea agreement, the VA investigation began after Greeley filed a federal fiduciary account report in December 2010. She listed specific CD and checking accounts, with respective account numbers and current balances. The form had the purported signature of the bank manager and seal or stamp of the bank.
But when the VA Fiduciary Unit in Manchester requested certain supporting documents, which Greeley could not provide, the scheme began to unravel.
Feith said bank records can only be retrieved back to 2004, two years after Greeley's appointment as fiduciary, but while Levin said Greeley took small amounts at first, within two years Greeley had taken and spent almost $59,000, leaving just under $60 in her father's account.
When the VA began making payments, the monthly amount was $2,163, which grew to $2,673 by the time she was terminated as fiduciary in 2011.
Although some of the missing money could be replaced through the bond Greeley was required to purchase as a fiduciary, it would only cover $200,000 of the money taken.


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Friday Night 9-1-1
On Friday, Times-Record reporter Bonnie Jo Hanson spent the evening doing a "ride-along" in the 9-1-1 dispatch center with Rhoda Baade. Though it was a quiet Friday night, Hanson got a glimpse into what it's like for a dispatcher on any night. For more about a night in the dispatch center, read Tuesday's Times-Record.