Women’s Domestic Violence Shelter to Open Doors in Hooper Bay
HOOPER BAY—The Native Village of Hooper Bay and Rural Alaska Community Action Program, Inc. (RurAL CAP) will open a women’s domestic violence shelter in the Hooper Bay sub-region in early 2020 as a result of extensive collaboration with community stakeholders.
The Hooper Bay Victim Services Project will provide comprehensive victim services and support for women and their children who have experienced domestic violence and/or sexual assault in Hooper Bay and the surrounding sub-region including Chevak and Scammon Bay. RurAL CAP has partnered with regional and statewide organizations that are experienced in facilitating victim services in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region to plan and implement this project.
“By providing these trauma-informed and culturally relevant victim services,” RurAL CAP CEO Patrick M. Anderson said, “we intend to address Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs) that will lead to acceptance, acknowledgement and, ultimately, healing from these traumas.”
Renovation of the building, a space provided by the Sea Lion Corporation, began in September. In partnership with the Native Village of Hooper Bay, RurAL CAP will staff the shelter twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with victim service advocates and community outreach and legal workers trained in trauma-informed services.
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April 2024
“Alaska Native communities experience the highest rates of family violence, suicide, and alcohol abuse in the United States,” according to The Washington Post’s article “In rural villages, little protection for Alaska Natives,” with “a domestic violence rate ten times the national average; physical assault of women twelve times the national average.” In the Alaska Victimization Survey published by the University of Alaska Anchorage Justice Center, four out of ten women living in Yukon-Kuskokwim communities like Hooper Bay have experienced intimate partner violence in their lifetime and one in four adult women have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime. The rate of child maltreatment was 69.3 percent higher in Alaska compared to the national rate, according to the State of Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.
“Local and statewide partnerships are key to this project’s success,” said Cathie Clements, RurAL CAP Community Development Director. “We are honored to work alongside so many devoted organizations to make this vision a reality and look forward to developing new partnerships as we support community needs.”
Partners for this project include US Department of Justice, Native Village of Hooper Bay, Sea Lion Corporation, community organizations and members from the sub-region of Hooper Bay, Emmonak Women’s Shelter, Tundra Women’s Coalition, Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center, and the Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.
Those interested in contributing to the Hooper Bay Victim Services Project can make donations to the Hooper Bay Domestic Violence Shelter Fund on Fundly.
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