Sexual Abuse & Domestic Violence

Bethel Police have arrested a woman’s alleged rapist 110 days after she reported she was assaulted.

The woman, Juanita Nick, said that she was raped by 32-year-old Bethel resident Samuel Steven Jenkins on the night of Dec. 18, 2020. Jenkins faces two felony charges of sexual assault in the second degree, penetration of an incapacitated victim and sexual assault in the third degree.

As of April 12, Jenkins was being held in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Correctional Center on $75,000 bail. He was arraigned on April 9, and his preliminary hearing will be on April 26.

After Nick reported that she was raped, she was administered a sexual assault kit at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation. She said that it took 34 days for Bethel police to pick up her sexual assault kit. Bethel police would not comment on the timeline.

More than two months after her initial report to police, Nick protested what she said was the criminal justice system’s inaction on her case.

Nick’s protest prompted the Bethel City Council to hire an independent investigator to review the city’s handling of sexual assault cases.

Domestic violence shelters around the nation are preparing for a large decrease in federal funding that will take effect in a few months. Tundra Women’s Coalition in Bethel said that it will mean a 20% cut in its operating budget and could lead to a significant loss in services.

Federal funding for domestic violence and women’s shelters from the Victims of Crimes Act has been decreasing in recent years. The Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault is an organization within the Alaska Department of Public Safety that directs federal funding to victim services programs within the state.

In a letter sent on  April 1, CDVSA Executive Director Diane Casto wrote that Victims of Crimes Act funding would decrease by 34.6% from the previous year. This would affect shelters like Tundra Women’s Coalition and the Emmonak Women’s Shelter in Fiscal Year 2022, which begins in July.

“Everyone was like ‘what is everybody going to do? What are the shelter programs going to do?’ It was devastating news,” said JoAnn Horn, director of Emmonak Women’s Shelter.

Bethel’s Tundra Women’s Coalition Executive Director Eileen Arnold explained how that decrease in federal funding would affect her organization’s bottom line.

“It’s like 20% of our full, annual operating budget. It’s deep, it’s significant,” Arnold said.

She said with that large of a funding cut, TWC will have to think about eliminating services.

“That amount of money would equal, like, the entire Children’s Advocacy Center, or it would be the entire shelter,” Arnold said. “These are terrible choices.”

Arnold said that TWC could also consider cutting part of every program.

“But that’s just as difficult because our staff are already under-resourced and overwhelmed with work,” Arnold said.

Horn said that if they can’t find more money, the Emmonak Women’s Shelter would likely have to cut the number of its advocates. Advocates answer crisis calls 24 hours a day for the 13 villages that Emmonak Women’s Shelter serves. They also arrange accommodations for women and children at the shelter and coordinate with law enforcement.

Arnold is hoping that the state can help fill the budget gap left by the decrease in federal funding. Arnold is asking people to call their state legislators to advocate on behalf of their shelters.

“I hope that TWC has helped people in this community. And for the people that it has helped, I hope that they would tell our legislators that,” Arnold said.

There is a House Finance Committee hearing on Friday, April 9 at 1:30 p.m. to share public testimony on the state’s operating budget.

Bethel City Council took action in response to a Bethel woman’s protest regarding her sexual assault case. On Tuesday, the city council voted to hire an independent investigator to review the city’s response to reports of sexual assault.

On Dec.19, Bethel resident Juanita Nick reported to police that she was sexually assaulted.

Nick said that Bethel police took over seven hours to initially respond to her call and that officers did not pick up her sexual assault kit until 34 days after it was administered. On March 4, she publicly protested the police department’s inaction.

In the weeks that followed Nick’s protest, Bethel residents and city council members expressed concern regarding her case. But the city council did not take any action.

Council member Mark Springer said that the city council has limited authority over the police department.

On Tuesday, the council directed the city administration to hire an independent investigator to evaluate the handling of sexual assault cases reported in Bethel. That independent investigator would be Rachel Gernat, a former sex crimes prosecutor. Gernat has worked in Bethel and other communities around Alaska for almost 15 years and has served on the statewide sexual assault training team.

“I’m very well versed in helping law enforcement and other community partners write policies and procedures related to the investigation of sex assault cases, with an eye toward doing a proper investigation,” Gernat said.

Gernat said that she would look at the Bethel Police Department, but also other community partners involved in the response to sexual assault reports. Bethel’s Sexual Assault Response Team is composed of Bethel police, Alaska State Troopers, the district attorney, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation, Tundra Women’s Coalition and the Children’s Advocacy Center.

At the end of her evaluation, Gernat said that she would write a report to the city council, making recommendations on how the city could improve its processes. She said that she would also provide training for those community partners involved in sexual assault response.

Council member Conrad “CJ” McCormick made the motion to hire Gernat.

“This is the absolute best course of action,” McCormick said. “This is obviously a rampant problem that we need to address, and I think this is the first step that we can take to really evaluating what we can do to better the situation.”

The action came during a special meeting where, for the first time, Bethel police chief Richard Simmons spoke publicly in response to complaints about his department’s handling of Nick’s sexual assault case.

Simmons supported the city council’s decision to hire an independent investigator to review his department’s response to sexual assault reports. He said that aside from some delay, his department handled Nick’s case properly.

“I think ultimately what you’ll find is even with the delay in picking up the kit, the case itself is a solid case, and it’s exactly where it needs to be,” Simmons said.

Simmons said that over the past few weeks, the department has put several new measures in place to improve its handling of sexual assault cases. For example, he said that his officers now periodically call YKHC to check if there are any sexual assault kits that need to be picked up.

“We now have an automated process that we call over regardless of what we may or may not have over there. We call twice a week just to make sure, and then we’ll swoop in and get it if we have something,” Simmons said.

Simmons also addressed why his department can lag behind in investigations. He said that because Bethel has a shortage of police officers and an overflow of police calls, delays are almost inevitable.

“When we only have two officers on and nobody is doing follow-up on investigations because your investigators are taking care of 911 calls, then these investigations are going to drag out, sometimes for months,” Simmons said.

Simmons said that data from the FBI shows Bethel as being in the top 5% of cities in violent crimes reported per capita.

“According to our population we have the right amount of officers, but according to our call volume, we’re one of the busiest cities in the State of Alaska,” Simmons said.

Council member Springer said that the council could make the decision to add more police officer positions in the city budget. The process to develop the next fiscal year’s budget will begin soon. Springer urged Bethel residents to call their council members if they want the city to dedicate more of its budget to policing.

Council member Alyssa Leary wasn’t completely convinced that adding more officers was the answer.

“I can’t fault Chief Simmons for pointing out that we may need additional staffing at the police department,” Leary said. “But I think what has been brought up also warrants a really deep look at the processes to make sure, you know, we’re not just adding more officers in, and then continuing to do some things that may not be beneficial to the public for public safety.”

The city’s administration is drafting a resolution to hire Gernat to review the city’s handling of sexual assault reports. The city council will consider that resolution in its April 13 regular meeting.

Content warning: This story features sensitive subject matter. If you need to talk with someone while reading this or if you need help, here are some resources.

• STAR Alaska: 907-276-7273; toll-free 1-800-478-8999
• Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault: 907-586-3650

The Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault website also has a list of resources.

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On March 4, a Bethel woman protested outside the Bethel courthouse. She said that she was raped, and she wanted to draw attention to what she claimed was the criminal justice system’s slow response in investigating her case.

Days after that protest, the woman said that she received a call from Bethel’s district attorney’s office, saying that her case would be looked into. The protest has ignited community dialogue on how local rape cases are handled and if victims are receiving timely justice.

Her name is Juanita Nick.

“I was assaulted and raped in Bethel, Alaska. I survived,” said Nick in a recording that she sent to KYUK. “My case wasn’t handled appropriately by Bethel Police Department, and I don’t ever want this kind of situation to ever happen to anyone.”

Nick said that her assault occurred the night of Dec. 18. Screenshots from her phone show that she called Bethel police the following morning at 3:41 a.m. to report that she had been raped. Five hours passed and police did not respond to her call, so she called again, and again at 10:06 a.m. Nick said that Bethel police arrived more than seven hours after she first called. She said that she was told that the reason for their delay was because there hadn’t been an officer available. In October 2020, Bethel Police Chief Richard Simmons stated that his department was understaffed for the number of calls they receive.

Simmons declined to say what time an officer responded to Nick’s call. He wrote in an email to KYUK that “answering these questions, even if it is because of the victim’s own comments, violates her right to privacy and impacts the impartiality of the trial.”

Nick doesn’t buy the chief’s explanation.

“They are certainly hiding behind the guise of protecting the victim,” Nick said. “They know the case was not handled appropriately.”

Nick said that Bethel police continued to delay their response to her sexual assault case. After her initial report, she started asking police for updates.

“At one point, when speaking to an officer, he asked me if my rape kit had been picked up by his department,” Nick said.

A rape kit, or sexual assault kit, is administered by a medical provider following a sexual assault to collect evidence from the victim, including DNA samples. Police generally then pick up the kit and submit it to a laboratory for analysis, which can then be used in court as evidence.

Nearly two weeks after the assault, Nick contacted her medical provider and learned that her rape kit had not been picked up by police. She said that her medical provider later informed her that Bethel police picked up her kit on Jan. 22, 34 days after it was administered. Asked to confirm when Bethel police submitted Nick’s rape kit to a laboratory for processing, Chief Simmons declined to comment.

State law requires law enforcement agencies to submit sexual assault kits to a crime lab within 30 days of collecting them. However, Alaska Department of Law spokesperson Maria Bahr said that no court has been asked to rule whether the law requires police to collect the kits from the medical providers within a certain timeframe. Three months before Nick’s alleged assault, on August 20, 2020, the Bethel Police Department reported in an annual audit to the Alaska Department of Public Safety that it had zero sexual assault kits on-site that were over 30 days old.

Nick said that she believes her case may have been mishandled because relatives of her alleged rapist work in the Bethel Police Department. She said that the officer who asked if his department had picked up her rape kit is related to her alleged rapist, and she is concerned that officer was in custody of her kit at some point. Simmons declined to say what policies Bethel police have to prevent officers from working on cases that involve family members.

Bethel City Manager Pete Williams said that the delay in picking up Nick’s sexual assault kit was due to lack of communication between Bethel police and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation, which administers the kits. He said that Bethel’s Sexual Assault Response Team met on March 18, where members of the police department and YKHC exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, which he said neither party had before the meeting.

YKHC Spokesperson Mary Horgan declined to address Williams’ comments but said that when the health corporation administers a sexual assault kit, it is ready for pick-up within 24 hours. She said police can call YKHC’s Sexual Assault Response Team’s on-call phone number that is staffed 24 hours a day to arrange a pick-up.

Williams added that another issue seemed to be the handoff process between Bethel police officers, some of whom work a two-week on, two-week off schedule. He said that it is easy for matters like Nick’s rape kit to fall through the cracks when an officer leaves for a two-week break. Simmons did not respond to KYUK’s questions about William’s comments.

Williams said as of March 19, he had not asked the police chief about a possible delayed response to Nick’s initial call to police, or about her claims that relatives of her alleged rapist were involved in handling her case.

At least one part of Nick’s complaint, the delayed processing of rape kits, is a longstanding problem statewide. In 2016, an audit conducted by the governor’s office and state troopers uncovered 3,800 rape kits across the state that were never submitted for processing. Alaska has since spent millions of dollars trying to get through the backlog, but over 800 kits remained unprocessed as of October 2020.

Nick, an Alaska Native woman in Bethel, is part of a group that that faces some of the highest rates of sexual violence in the nation. Western Alaska has twice as many felony sex offenses as the statewide average, and Alaskans as a whole report four times more sexual assaults than the national rate. Alaska Native females are disproportionately the victims of this violence, comprising 42% of the felony sex offense victims in the state while making up less than 8% of the state’s population.

Sexual assaults reported to police seldom get referred to prosecutors, and even fewer lead to a conviction.

In Alaska, if victims of a crime believe that their cases have been mishandled, they can contact the state Office of Victims’ Rights. Director Taylor Winston said that her office can audit the work of police and prosecutors.

“We can’t force them to prosecute; they have full discretion. But we have had cases where we’ve gotten involved and said, ‘here’s what we found is viable evidence,’ and they’ve gone ahead and charged the case,” Winston said.

Nick said that she didn’t know about the Office of Victims’ Rights until mid-March, but said that she plans to reach out to them about her case.

But before that, Nick took a different approach to ensuring that her case received justice. On March 3, she said that she called the district attorney’s office and was told that Bethel police had not referred her case to the DA. The next day, on March 4, 75 days after she said that she was sexually assaulted, she protested outside of the DA’s office with a few friends and family members.

The group held signs and chanted phrases like “Don’t let rape kits collect dust,” “Arrest the rapist on the loose” and “Her testimony counts too.” Nick said that she hoped to spur the criminal justice system to act on her case. She documented the protest on Facebook, writing that her alleged rapist continues to walk free and threaten her.

“I live in fear each day as I go to the store or post office that my rapist will hurt me,” Nick said.

Her protest worked. Six days after her demonstration, she said that she received a call from the DA’s office saying that her case would be looked into. Asked why Nick’s case had been delayed in prosecution and when Bethel police had referred her case to the DA’s Office, a spokesperson for the Bethel District Attorney declined to comment, saying that they wanted to avoid tainting the investigation or affecting the jury pool. KYUK has not been able to confirm whether the DA’s office has chosen to prosecute Nick’s case.

Nick’s decision to go public with her case has invigorated community dialogue about how sexual assault cases are handled. Her Facebook post documenting her experience has been shared more than 300 times. In the last Bethel City Council meeting, two members of the public spoke during the public comment section, criticizing the criminal justice system’s handling of her case.

“Hello world. This is 2021, and women are still fighting for their basic rights,” said Bethel resident Ruth Miller at the last council meeting. “Indigenous women are fighting for freedoms from forced sexual acts. Wake up. This has to stop.”

Nick’s protest has also drawn some backlash from community members. She said that she received Facebook messages saying “every victim is not a victim” and “other things are going on in the world.”

But for Nick, her protest was about more than her own case.

“Since the protest, I have had other victims reach out to me and share their story,” Nick said. “I am standing up now because I believe victims should not be shamed. I believe all reported sexual assaults should be investigated.”

While Nick’s case has received attention following her protest, she said that she shouldn’t have had to share her traumas publicly to move her case forward. But now that she has, she hopes her case moving ahead will push others toward justice as well.

Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that 9% of felony sex offenses reported to Alaska’s law enforcement in 2015 ended in a conviction. It is true that a fraction of felony sex offenses reported to law enforcement result in a conviction, but the exact percentage is unclear. The datasets of reported sex offenses, cases referred to prosecutors, and cases that result in a conviction are collected in different manners by different criminal justice agencies and cannot be compared to derive exact numbers.

The U.S. Coast Guard called off its search Wednesday for Alaska’s former top tribal health executive, Andy Teuber, a day after the helicopter he was piloting went missing near a windswept archipelago that pilots say is a notoriously tricky area to fly.

Teuber, 52, took off for Kodiak Island on Tuesday afternoon from downtown Anchorage’s Merrill Field. That was the same day the Anchorage Daily News published sexual abuse and coercion allegations by his former assistant, which appear to have prompted Teuber’s resignation last week from his $1.1 million-a-year job as president and chairman of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

On Wednesday, as a Coast Guard helicopter and cutter searched for Teuber’s helicopter near its last reported location in the Barren Islands, Alaskans who knew of his work in politics, health care and aviation were still trying to make sense of his disappearance.

Some speculated that Teuber could have intentionally crashed his helicopter, while others noted that the aircraft went missing in an area known as challenging for pilots.

“It creates its own weather. And it can creep up on you pretty fast,” said Tom Walters, a retired Kodiak helicopter pilot.

Teuber’s disappearance came after a swift fall from his position at ANTHC — one of Alaska’s largest businesses, with 3,500 employees and nearly $1 billion in annual revenue. He’d been president since 2008.

Teuber, who grew up in Kodiak, still held a separate chief executive job there at a regional tribal health care provider called the Kodiak Area Native Association. He’s also held positions on a number of nonprofit and other community boards, like the University of Alaska’s board of regents.

Last week, Teuber resigned his job at ANTHC along with his position on the University of Alaska board without giving an explanation.

Then, on Tuesday afternoon, the Daily News reported that Teuber’s resignation had come just after his former assistant, a 27-year-old Alaska Native woman, had accused him of forced sex and abusive behavior in a letter to ANTHC’s board of directors.

Teuber called the allegations against him false, and said he would never engage in a nonconsensual relationship with anyone.

Teuber told the Daily News that he’d recently been married, and he also listed his Anchorage home for sale this week, his real estate agent told news outlets Wednesday.

Teuber’s black and white Robinson R66 took off from Merrill Field around 2 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Coast Guard. Spokesperson Alexandria Preston said the aircraft’s last known location was two miles southeast of the Barren Islands, which lie about 25 miles off the southwest tip of the Kenai Peninsula.

Conditions around the time Teuber went missing were winds gusting to 21 miles and a temperature just below freezing, according to a nearby data buoy that National Weather Service officials said was the best source of information.

One of Teuber’s family members notified the Coast Guard that he was missing around 5 p.m. Tuesday, and the agency subsequently launched a 13-hour search that involved three helicopter crews, an HC-130 Hercules plane and a ship.

The crews spotted a yellow float that was consistent with a float that would have been found on Teuber’s helicopter, but they were unable to recover it and confirm that that was the case, said Preston.

The National Transportation Safety Board is now launching an investigation into Teuber’s disappearance and is assembling flight data and weather information, said Clint Johnson, the agency’s Alaska chief. It’s asking anyone who might have information about the weather in the area of the Barren Islands at the time to email witness@ntsb.gov.

ANTHC’s board, meanwhile, has launched its own investigation into the accusations against Teuber, which will be conducted by an “independent, outside investigator,” the organization said in a prepared statement Wednesday.

“Through the process of the investigation, this board is absolutely committed to ensuring a safe work environment for all ANTHC employees.” Bernice Kaigelak, who replaced Teuber as board chair last week, was quoted as saying. “Unfortunately, Alaska Native women are disproportionately impacted by violence. We will not tolerate misconduct or sexual harassment of any kind. We are moving forward.”

This article was produced in partnership with ProPublica as part of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

A week ago, one of Alaska’s most powerful executives abruptly resigned from his job leading the largest tribal health organization in the state. Neither the outgoing president nor the group said why.

Earlier that day, his former assistant had delivered a scathing three-page letter to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium that described a pattern of abusive behavior, harassment and coerced sexual encounters by president Andy Teuber, according to the document, obtained by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica.

The woman, Savanah Evans, who is 27, delivered her own resignation letter on Feb. 23, describing workplace abuse, harassment and intimidation at the hands of Teuber, who is 52.

“Andy unrelentingly coerced, forced, and required sex of me,” Evans wrote in her letter. In a phone interview Monday, she told the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica that much of the abuse took place in ANTHC offices, and that it derailed her personal and professional life.

Evans gave her permission to be named in this article, saying she wants to end a cycle of abuse.

“If I don’t speak up,” she wrote in her resignation letter, “I will be no less guilty than those who have done nothing but swept it under the rug.”

Teuber’s departure follows the recent resignations of two consecutive Alaska attorneys general, Kevin Clarkson and Ed Sniffen, and of Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, all following allegations of inappropriate interactions with women. Clarkson apologized for sending hundreds of text messages to a junior state employee, including some inviting her to his home. Sniffen has not responded to requests for comment about allegations that three decades ago he had sex with an underage high school student when he was her mock trial coach. Berkowitz acknowledged “unacceptable personal conduct” after a TV news reporter disclosed that he had sent her nude selfies.

In an email Monday, Teuber denied the allegations, saying he had a “completely consensual personal relationship.” In a separate email, Teuber said that Evans often initiated the sexual encounters between them. Evans, in turn, says that Teuber is the one who insisted their sexual relationship continue even after she wanted it to stop.

Teuber wrote that he couldn’t respond to some specific allegations about ANTHC, its employees or its practices because of strict confidentiality provisions he agreed to as part of his former position.

“I have never, and would never, engage in a non-consensual or ‘quid pro quo’ personal relationship with anyone,” he wrote. “The allegations of wrongdoing that I have been made aware of are false, and these allegations and their timing appear designed to portray me unjustly and falsely; to damage my personal and family relationships; but especially to sabotage my recent engagement and new marriage; and to undermine my professional prospects.”

Evans and her attorney, Jana Weltzin, said they were not aware that Teuber was engaged or had gotten married.

ANTHC spokesperson Shirley Young said the tribal health organization is conducting an “independent outside” investigation, but that the organization could not comment on specific allegations, citing personnel confidentiality rules.

Alaska law does not prohibit sexual relationships between supervisors and subordinates, and ANTHC’s policies do not explicitly prohibit them either. The organization’s policy on personal relationships in the workplace requires supervisors to disclose any sexual relationship with “an individual within their chain of command or area of influence” to the human resources department. It also requires employees who are in a relationship to behave professionally “during work hours and within the working environment.”

Teuber was not Evans’ direct supervisor even though she was his direct assistant, Weltzin said. Young said she could not comment on whether Teuber disclosed any kind of relationship with Evans, as would be required by the rule, citing personnel confidentiality rules.

Rebecca G. Pontikes, a Boston attorney who specializes in representing workers in gender-based employment discrimination and sexual harassment cases, said some companies go further and ban sexual relationships between supervisors and subordinates. Such relationships, if they aren’t consensual, would amount to sexual harassment, which is illegal in the workplace under federal employment law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, she said.

Teuber wrote that he would participate in the investigation and planned to offer “evidence refuting the allegations of wrongdoing made against me.” Evans said she possesses a “massive” number of text messages and one or more recordings that substantiate her claims. Teuber said he would forward video files and a “volume of exchanges” to the news organizations, but he had not done so as of Tuesday afternoon. Evans and her attorney declined to provide a copy of an audio recording that had been provided to board members, and did not respond to requests to see the text messages.

For more than a decade, Teuber was the president of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and one of the most powerful executives in Alaska.

ANTHC is “the largest, most comprehensive Tribal health organization in the United States,” according to its website, and it has a far-reaching impact in Alaska: The organization co-owns and manages the Alaska Native Medical Center, a major trauma hospital in Anchorage, as well as providing health services to more than 170,000 Alaska Native people and communities across the state.

The organization has more than 3,000 employees, making it one of the largest health employers in Alaska.

Teuber was paid a salary of more than $1 million per year to oversee ANTHC, at the same time serving as chief executive of the Kodiak Area Native Association, a regional tribal health provider. He served on other powerful boards, including the Alaska Federation of Natives, and he was a member of the University of Alaska Board of Regents. He resigned both of those roles last week as well.

Alaska has the highest rate of sexual assault in the United States, particularly among Alaska Native women.

A sexual relationship

Soon after she started work as Teuber’s special assistant in October 2019, Evans said she received a request for an “inappropriate photo” while on a work trip to Kodiak with Teuber, which she refused to provide. Their sexual relationship began the same month, according to the resignation letter. Within a month or two, Evans said she told Teuber she did not want to continue having sex with him, she said in an interview.

Teuber denied the allegation.

“After she made her interest plainly known, we did engage in intimate relations, which were always willing, voluntary and consensual, and often initiated by Ms. Evans,” Teuber wrote in an email.

The two continued to have sex. Evans said she was required to bring paperwork to Teuber’s home office.

“(On) my first trip to deliver papers for his signature, he pushed me into the downstairs front bedroom for sex and told me that, ‘You always listen better after I fuck you,’” she wrote to the board members.

“You may wonder if this relationship was consensual,” she wrote. “It is not, if the person controls your employment.”

In one instance, Evans wrote that “(Teuber) wouldn’t get off of me to let me leave.”

“Later he texted me, simply saying ‘I’m sorry; that wasn’t cool.’”

Teuber denied that any sexual encounter between the two was not consensual.

Another time, Teuber and the woman had a sexual encounter inside the ANTHC boardroom executive suite, she wrote.

Teuber denies this happened.

“This is another degrading, dehumanizing example of the requirement to keep my job,” she wrote. “Any time I tried to ignore his calls or texts during my personal non-work private time, he would swear at me, demand responses, and threaten me by referring to my job and stating that I have it because of him.”

Teuber responded: “I did at times express myself strongly to Ms. Evans, but all such expressions were job performance related.”

Teuber said in an email that he resigned “a few minutes” after he learned of the allegations against him. He did not answer questions about why he resigned.

“I am a single mother of a 4-year-old daughter. I am an Athabascan from the Koyukon Region,” Evans wrote to the 15-member ANTHC board. She said she appreciated the opportunity to work for the organization and acknowledged that her complaint about Teuber’s behavior would normally be sent to a human resources department, not the board of directors.

In her resignation letter, Evans said that ANTHC has tolerated and enabled similar abuse in the past.

Teuber wrote that he was not aware of any prior allegations against him.

ANTHC did not respond to questions about any past reports of abuse. In a written statement Monday, incoming chairperson Bernice Kaigelak said the organization “will not tolerate harassment of any kind.”

“As the new chair, I am committed to a harassment-free workplace,” Kaigelak said. “This is particularly important given the rate of sexual harassment or abuse of Alaska Native women. All complaints of harassment will be investigated, and prompt action will be taken when issues are identified, regardless about whom they are directed.”

This story was originally published by the Anchorage Daily News and is republished here with permission.