Rashah McChesney

It happens every year. Fall somehow abandons us to winter. 

Juneau drivers hitting the road Thursday morning got a taste of it as the first big winter storm blew in bringing snow showers and blizzard-like conditions. 

“Everybody just needs to slow down. We got 40 miles of road, just slow down,” said Excel Towing and Recovery Corporation owner Stan Lee.

No, not that Stan Lee.

“It’s actually Stanley James Lee Jr.,” he said. “I do sign autographs, I don’t write comics anymore, but I’m not dead.”

Every year when Juneau gets its first big winter storm, Lee knows he’s going to get a lot of calls from people who weren’t quite ready to switch to winter driving and they end up sliding off the roads. He said it’s usually in the same places every year too. And he said one of the most dangerous turns in town is by the Juneau Yacht Club.

“Everybody needs to slow down between [Marie Drake High School] and the yacht club,” he said.

Aside from “slow down,” Lee has a few other tips for Juneau drivers as well. One big one is don’t drive in this type of weather if you’re not comfortable doing it. 

“My daughter for example, I don’t have her studded tires on yet and she called and was uncomfortable,” Lee said.

So, he went and picked her up.

“If you’re not confident with your driving skills then you should not be on the road,” he said.

He said if you do run off the road, call the towing company directly. If the police do it, Lee said it’s more expensive. 

Juneau Police Lt. Krag Campbell said he doesn’t have the numbers yet but he knows this type of snowy day tends to lead to more crashes and people running off the roads. 

“Even though people live here it takes a little time period for people to remember ‘OK, it’s winter, I got to do winter driving.’ Maybe people start getting their winter tires back on but there’s definitely a time period where we see a little more crashes when the snow starts coming in,” Campbell said.

He said another problem intersection is the so-called “McNugget Intersection,” that’s the intersection at Glacier Highway and Egan Drive, right next to McDonald’s. Campbell said that area gets slippery. He says the highway in front of Fred Meyer heading into downtown also sees a lot of crashes because people accelerate and lose control. 

“Slow down to safe and reasonable speeds for the road conditions,” Campbell said. “It’s not always going to be the speed limit, could be less than that.”

Both Campbell and Lee asked that drivers remember to slow down and change lanes when they see emergency vehicles. It’s the law and it can prevent another crash. 

“Yeah, we do traffic stops on the side of the road and cars are still whipping by you,” Campbell said.

National Weather Service meteorologist Grant Smith said snow showers will continue Thursday evening. Then Friday, the low-pressure center that’s causing that weather is expected to move on and Friday afternoon and into Saturday the skies may clear. But, another weather system is moving in from the south that could bring another round of winter weather over the weekend and temperatures are expected to plummet. 

“We’re looking at highs in the 20s, Friday night we could actually see lows in the teens,” Campbell said. “A little bit farther north, Haines, Skagway they could actually be seeing single-digit lows.”

When that happens, Smith said it’ll be time for Juneauites to turn on faucets to keep their pipes from freezing. 

But he said this temperature drop is “just a little blip,” and it should warm up next week.

About thirty more people tested positive for COVID-19 in Juneau over the last week than has been reported by the state and city.

In a media release, city officials attributed this to a technical issue with the state getting lab results from Bartlett Regional Hospital. It’s not clear yet what the issue is, the city manager’s office hasn’t yet returned a call seeking more information.

Bartlett processes lab results from the hospital itself and also from the city’s drive through testing facility.

On Wednesday there were three people with active COVID-19 infections being treated at the hospital. The Juneau School District didn’t report any new cases.

Statewide, 427 people tested positive for COVID-19 and two more people died. So far, just over 147,000 Alaskans and visitors to the state have tested positive for the virus since the beginning of the pandemic. That’s about one out of every five people in the state.

This story will be updated when more information becomes available.

Last week a woman in Anchorage went public on social media with an allegation of sexual assault, prompting other people to share their stories. 

By the end of the week, a group of Twitter accounts published a spreadsheet of names. It grew fast — from a few hundred to more than 500 people before the list came down three days later. 

The list — first called The Alaska Abuser List and later changed to Questionable People of Alaska — is anonymous and crowdsourced. In most cases, there are no specific allegations backing up the claim that a person is an abuser. In rare cases, organizers linked to a person’s name in the sex offender registry or noted court case numbers. But the vast majority are just listed by name.

The list’s organizers did not want to be interviewed on the record, but they said in social media posts that by publishing the list, they’re trying to bring some accountability to abusers in Alaska.

Advocates and law enforcement say this type of vigilante justice may not be the best way to do that. There’s the risk of being sued for defamation, among other considerations.

A similar national spreadsheet, called the Sh**ty Media Men list, gained attention when it was published during the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017. At least one person named on it filed a $1.5 million defamation lawsuit after the list’s creator revealed her identity.

In Alaska, more than half of women will experience intimate partner violence, sexual violence or both in their lifetimes, but most perpetrators will not get prosecuted.

Mandy Cole, the Executive Director of Juneau’s domestic and sexual violence shelter, AWARE, said a list like this can be a way for victims to take back control.

“I think it goes back to that feeling of just like powerlessness and hopelessness that you get when someone takes advantage of your body in that way and, for many of us, it doesn’t feel like there’s recourse,” Cole said.

She said going through the legal channels of filing a report and getting a medical examination is an emotionally costly prospect.

“The idea of then subjecting yourself to more trauma in order to get a result of just being believed and heard is hard,” she said. 

Cole said she understands the motivation behind wanting to say “this happened to me” without having to do all of the things that go along with making an official report to law enforcement. 

She doesn’t know who made Alaska’s list, but she thinks it’s more about catharsis for survivors of abuse than it is about punishment for people named on it. 

People sometimes rely on a whisper network in situations where they can’t get justice — sharing information between friends and colleagues, warning people away from abusers. 

Cole said the power of a whisper network lies in the trust people have in the people they’re sharing and getting information from. The people in a whisper network know each other, and they know the people they’re whispering about. 

“And so that is the information that I need — not necessarily like, you know, forensic evidence,” she said. 

But Cole said these networks also lose some of the power of trusted secrets shared among friends when they go public. The bar gets higher, and people want proof and evidence. 

“I mean, I think that’s how our culture decided to solve this issue — once it’s in the public sphere, it has to be about things that you can prove,” she said. 

Cole and others said this spreadsheet is a symptom of a much larger problem in Alaska. 

The majority of sexual assaults are never reported to the police and every year hundreds of thousands of instances of domestic violence nationwide go unreported. 

And Juneau Police Department Lt. Krag Campbell said just a fraction of what is reported will be prosecuted successfully. Still, he said he probably would have encouraged the list’s organizers to find another way to tackle the problem. 

“I would say they just have to use a lot of caution. Because, they’re throwing out a lot of information that could be damaging to people — it might not be justifiable, because they’re not vetting the source of information,” he said.

He looked at the list when it was published and said it was difficult to figure out who was being accused of what. The list had just two categories, sexual assault and domestic violence, but many of the names were not categorized in either. 

Campbell is looking for more specificity, in part because an officer in the Juneau Police Department is named on the list. Like so many of the names on the list, the claims are unsubstantiated. But Campbell said he takes the allegation seriously. 

He said the officer went through a background check to get a job in the force, and Campbell didn’t hear of any allegations or even rumors that came up in that investigation. 

 “Could it still be [that] things are out there? You know, there’s always the chance,” he said. “But we just, we just don’t have any information to go off of, and our plan is to at least look into it.”

Campbell wouldn’t say if he talked directly to the officer about the list; he called it a personnel matter. 

“It would be good, you know, if somebody does have an allegation that they believe is true and accurate, then, is to make a report,” Campbell said.

And if that person doesn’t want to go to Juneau Police with an accusation, he suggests making it to another agency like the Alaska State Troopers or a sexual assault and domestic violence advocate. 

Campbell said he’s cautious of an unsubstantiated list of allegations because he’s dealt with instances of false reporting throughout his career — not just confined to rape and sexual assault. 

Data shows that it’s not common for people to falsely report rape or sexual violence. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center estimates the rate of false reporting at somewhere between 2% and 10% of cases. 

Isaac Weber says he’s one of those rare cases. He found out his name was on the list from an ex-girlfriend. 

“It was just really a stomach-dropping moment. I couldn’t believe it. I went through the list and saw that it was, in fact, there — my name along with a bunch of other people that I knew all in a row,” he said. “I couldn’t think of what I could have possibly done to deserve a place on this list next to all of these disgusting people. Just being roped in with that made me feel very small in the moment.” 

His mom, Sarah Weber, works in addiction and mental health services. She describes her professional and personal lives as trauma-informed. She said it was surreal and difficult to talk to her son about what may have led up to someone putting his name on the list. 

“I absolutely grilled him,” she said.

Isaac had similar conversations with his current girlfriend and older sister, and he said he felt hopeless. 

“Every part of me tells me that they trust me completely and that they know that I would never do this. But that irrational anxiety that just keeps nipping away at my head tells me that everybody kind of believes it, and that’s really scary,” he said. 

Setting that fear aside, Isaac and his mother say their family is intimately familiar with sexual violence and the toll it takes on people. He said that being falsely accused of something is hard, but it doesn’t compare to the experience victims of violence and sexual assault go through every day. 

They believe they know who put his name on the list. They shared a screenshot of a text-thread appearing to corroborate their account that his name was included as a cruel joke. But they know that’s probably not enough to prove Isaac’s innocence to people who have never met him.

Sarah Weber fears that this allegation will follow her son throughout his life. But there’s also the problem of pushing back against an effort they both believe is valid. She said the unfortunate thing about the list is that there’s a need for it. 

“It feels like for some of the women that were posting names on there, it’s like their only way to get any sort of justice. And for lack of better words, that sucks,” she said. “That sucks to know that … an anonymous Twitter feed is the best that some of these women can get. It is really disheartening.” 

Both said if they had seen the list and Isaac’s name hadn’t been on it, they’d have assumed everyone on it had committed a crime. 

This is the tough spot the family is in. They say they’re concerned that the inclusion of names of people who don’t belong on the list lessens its impact. 

Sarah Weber feels her own discomfort and sees her son’s discomfort, but she thinks there are probably people on that list who deserve to be there. 

“Having the discomfort of their names put on the list versus the discomfort and pain they’ve caused real victims is like small potatoes. It’s nothing,” she said. 

“Drops in a pond,” Isaac added. 

If you’re a survivor of sexual assault, ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News compiled this Alaska Sexual Assault Survivor Guide.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Sarah Weber’s name. 

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of human remains that may be difficult for some readers.

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Juneau police and Doug Farnsworth’s family say his body has been found. It’s not clear yet how he died.

“A hiker was doing their normal hike with their dog, and their dog ran up the hill above Flume, kind of by Gold Creek. And that’s where he found the remains of my brother,” said Doug Farnsworth’s sister, Kiersten Farnsworth.

Farnsworth has been missing since late September. A truck he’d been driving was found close to the Perseverance Trail, near downtown Juneau. At first there was a large search and rescue operation that included Alaska State Troopers, the Coast Guard and a local canine group, but they found no trace of him. For the last month, ground searches were largely organized by family and friends.

When the hiker stumbled on the remains on Sunday afternoon, Kiersten Farnsworth said it wasn’t a whole body, but there was enough to identify her brother.

“They did find some bones and his clothes and the gun and a phone. So we can’t really determine how death was, just because most of him is missing,” she said.

She said she got a call from Juneau police at about 8 p.m. on Sunday night.

“I was really upset last night,” she said. “I’d say the hardest part is calling family member after family member, re-explaining everything.”

She said those calls have been complicated by how quickly the police posted on social media that he’d been found. JPD updated its missing persons post on Facebook at 8:10 p.m.

“I was really surprised at how quick they jumped the gun to post though because I barely had time to call the family,” she said. “I mean, it took three days to make a post about him missing, but it took them hours to say that they found (him).”

She said police are supposed to be out in the woods today looking for more remains.

Juneau police reported on Monday that the body was found in the woods near Irwin Street. According to a media release, they’ve sent Farnsworth’s remains to the medical examiner in Anchorage for an autopsy and are still investigating.

Kiersten Farnsworth lives in Arizona, but she and her brother were raised in Juneau. She said she’s been inundated with messages and calls as news spreads that her brother has been found.

Phone calls to family have been hard.

“They’re destroyed,” she said. “They’re pretty crushed. A lot of them are stuck in this question as well — what happened?”

Now Farnsworth says she’s working on getting the money to travel back to Juneau so they can lay him to rest. And she’s looking for more information about the hiker so she can give them the $5,000 reward her family offered for information about Doug Farnsworth’s disappearance.

“That dog deserves a trophy,” she said.

And she’s working on repurposing a Facebook group that’s gathered nearly 800 members. She said she wants it to be a place where people can go to coordinate searches for other people who go missing in Juneau.

She’s said she’s building a roadmap of sorts — a packet with templates for missing-person fliers and links to local aid organizations. She envisions a group where people can post about where they’ve searched and link to maps, a place for the community to work together outside of official search and rescue channels.

“I don’t think anybody should have to go through somebody missing and then feel like they’re not important enough to look for,” she said.

Correction: This story has been corrected with the time frame Doug Farnsworth disappeared and to reflect that while he and his sister were raised in Juneau, they were born in Arizona.

An anonymous, crowdsourced document known as the Alaska Abuser List is circulating on social media, accusing anyone named on it of abuse ranging from domestic violence to sexual assault.

By Saturday morning there were 342 names on the list, including a police officer and the owner of an Anchorage restaurant. The list doesn’t include detailed allegations against each person or evidence to back up specific claims of abuse.

Several people named on the list appear to have lengthy Courtview records.

It’s not clear yet who created the list. At least four Twitter accounts are being used to collect names. Messages sent to two Twitter accounts involved in curating it have not been returned, and a third who shared the list hasn’t responded either.

The list’s creators wrote that they weren’t compiling the list to encourage violence against the people on it but to bring “accountability for their actions and safety for everyone.” 

A similar spreadsheet, called the “Sh**ty Media Men” list, gained national attention when it was published during the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017. The controversial list documented allegations of abusive behavior from men in the media and publishing worlds.

That list was intended to be anonymous. At least one person on it filed a defamation lawsuit after the list’s creator revealed her identity.  

Editor’s note: We removed a direct link and a tweet that had a link to the list from this story. 

Another Juneau man has gone missing, and his family say they haven’t heard from him for weeks. 

Juneau police say they’ve been looking for Clifford White since they got a missing person’s report for him on Oct. 31.

White’s family said it’s unusual not to hear anything from him for this long. 

“He’s gone for a few days but he always called back,” said his father Mark White.

He said his son has been struggling since his mother died late last year. 

“She died of COVID-19,” he said. “It almost took me too. Somehow I survived that. ”

Mark White said she was the first person in Juneau to die from the virus. He got sick too and was at Bartlett Regional Hospital for almost a month. And Clifford White, who was close to his mom and usually lives with his dad, hasn’t been the same since. 

White, who is 76 and struggling with long-term COVID-19 symptoms, said he misses his son. And he has one message for him.

“Please call me,” he said.

Clifford White is a local MMA fighter. People describe him as being in good shape. He’s 29 years old and Alaska Native. He has short black hair and his father says he has a goatee and mustache right now. He’s about 5 feet 11 inches tall and has tattoos. 

Cecilia Lott, his aunt, said they’ve tried calling him several times, but his phone goes straight to voicemail. Some friends said on social media that they’ve gotten messages from him. 

“My daughter just got done looking all over and checking the trails and everything for him, where the homeless people stay,” Lott said.

She said she last heard from him about 3 weeks ago. He generally jogs by her house in Switzer Creek. She said he wanted to celebrate his late mother’s birthday, but it was hard. And, he knew he was depressed. 

“Yeah, he knew. Everybody knew,” she said. “We were trying to counsel him and everything cause he always listens to me. He calls me mom instead of auntie.”

She said she’s hopeful that he’s in town and that they’ll find him soon. 

Clifford White is the fourth Juneau man to go missing since August. 

Anyone with information about him can reach the Juneau Police Department at 907-586-0600 or make anonymous tips through Juneau Crime Line.