Sexual Abuse & Domestic Violence

Alaska State Troopers say a Chevak man has admitted to killing Roxanne Smart last summer. The announcement was made Saturday through an online dispatch that they had arrested 20-year-old Samuel Atchak, of Chevak.

Megan Peters, a spokesperson for the Alaska State Troopers says investigators were waiting on lab results.

“After almost a year-long investigation we got some lab results back that had to be analyzed and after we got those results we were able to go back into the community of Chevak and do some follow-up interviews. Once we were done with the interviews we were able to make an arrest in the Roxanne Smart Homicide. I’m sure it’s been a very hard time for friends and family as they’ve waited through the course of it, but with these types of investigation we need to make sure that we’re doing everything the right way,” said Peters.

The arrest took place Friday just before 1 p.m. It followed an interview by investigators on Thursday. Smart, 19, was found dead outside the Chevak Health Clinic last August, with multiple stab wounds to her chest and neck.

Smart’s family and friends had been campaigning online since the time of her death to keep her case from getting cold.

During a follow-up investigation this past Thursday Troopers with the Alaska Bureau of Investigation interviewed Atchak in Chevak. According to charging documents Atchak said he placed Smart in a “choke hold” until she lost consciousness and he sexually assaulted her. But Atchak denied killing Smart at that time.

Troopers arrested Atchak Friday on charges of first-degree sexual assault and second-degree assault. During the arrest, the charging documents say, he admitted he stabbed Smart the night he sexually assaulted her. He now also faces a charge for first-degree murder.

Atchak was arraigned Saturday. He’s being held at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Correctional Center in Bethel without bail. His arrest comes eleven months after Smart was found dead in Chevak on August 27^th, 2014.

Jessica Ayuluk, who is a resident of Chevak and an administrator for the Facebook page Justice For Roxanne Smart, said through an online message Saturday she was glad to hear about the arrest.

“I’m happy and relieved that the person who did this to her is finally caught and put away. I’m more happy that her family can get closure, now,” said Ayuluk.

 

Saroj is a cook at a public school in her village, Dujana, in the northern Indian state of Haryana. Like most people in this state, she doesn’t have a last name.

She walks to work down narrow streets of concrete homes with cows and buffaloes outside. She is short, only about 5 feet 2, but she walks tall and confident in her traditional mustard-colored tunic and pants. Her tanned face is framed by big, dark eyes and a square jaw.

As Saroj passes an old man sitting outside a house, she leans in close to me and starts whispering.

“That man sitting on that chair, he’s my husband’s elder brother,” she says. “He quarreled a lot with me.”

“What did he quarrel about?” I whisper back. The man, with his back to us, is still within earshot.

“Well, he wanted to control me,” she says. “So that I wouldn’t come and go from the house as I pleased. He wanted me to ask for his permission, that’s why.”

She looks indignant, her voice growing louder the farther we get from him.

Today, Saroj lives her life on her own terms. But like the vast majority of women in rural India, she spent most of her life confined to her home, obeying the men in her family.

It took her more than two decades to break free from the traditional rules of this region. What helped turn her life around was getting a job at the local school.

Married At 16, Scarred For Life

Saroj grew up in India’s capital city, New Delhi. Her parents married her off at 16.

“I came here after I got married,” she says.

This is her husband’s village. The marriage gave her two daughters and two thick scars, 6 inches long, on the inside of her left arm. The scars are from a time when Saroj’s husband hit her with a wooden stick. She says her husband loved her but would beat her whenever he got drunk.

Saroj tried to get help by telling relatives and neighbors.

“If I told someone, they’d say, ‘After all, it’s your husband beating you, not some random man.’ ”

This is a particularly patriarchal part of India. Domestic violence is common here.

But one day, after about a decade of marriage, Saroj’s husband just disappeared. She searched for him for months but found no clue to his whereabouts. She didn’t even know whether he was alive or dead.

Back in her village, she was treated like a widow. Widows in Haryana are often married off to one of their husband’s younger brothers to keep property and children in the family. So Saroj moved in with her younger brother-in-law Dharamveer.

“I thought, well, he’ll raise my children; he’ll look after me,” she says.

What happened was the opposite. He drank a lot and was more violent than his brother. She stayed with him, though, and bore a son. But she felt miserable and helpless.

Her Big Break

When her son was still a toddler, she met the first person who was sympathetic to her — a teacher at a local school.

“She’d come to get her daughters admitted at the school,” recalls Santra Devi. “We started talking, and I came to know that poor thing, she was very sad.”

Santra says Saroj told her about her husband’s drinking and that she had no money for food.

“So I said why don’t you come to the school and help us out with a few things?”

Santra meant odd jobs like cleaning, making tea, running errands. It was Saroj’s first time working outside her home. “She didn’t know anything about anything back then,” Santra says. But, she says Saroj was hard-working and learned quickly.

A few years later she got her big break. In 2004, the school signed on to the government’s Mid Day Meal Scheme, a program that provides free school lunch at public schools. The program requires schools to hire cooks, preferably poor and underprivileged women like Saroj.

The school hired her full time to cook lunch for the students. The pay wasn’t much — less than $20 a month. But the job became a lifeline for her. For her husband, though, it was a threat, because he couldn’t control her anymore.

“Her husband was awful,” recalls Santra. “He would stop her on the road, beat her up. He even came into the school. If she had any money, he’d take it away from her.”

He kept trying to persuade Saroj to give up her job. When she refused, he beat her more.

Santra and other teachers decided to intervene. They spoke directly to Dharamveer and threatened to report him to the police.

“We told him that if you come here again, you’ll end up in jail,” says Santra. “We made sure he didn’t beat her on the streets either. We put pressure on him.”

Their strategy worked. He stopped attacking her in public. But inside their home, Saroj says the violence continued.

The Final Blow

“I’d feel angry, because he just wouldn’t change,” she says.

Then one night he did something he’d never done before.

“He broke my teeth,” says Saroj. “He hit me with a pipe. You know the ones we use to blow air into the wood stove? It’s here somewhere. I’ll show you.”

She walks out to her kitchen, returns with a narrow pipe about a foot long and places it in my hands.

“This is an iron rod!” I said. The pipe is heavy and cold in my hands. “He hit you with this, on the face?”

“Yes,” she says.

This time, Saroj did something she’d never done before.

“I went straight to the police,” she says.

Still bleeding, Saroj walked to the police station and filed a charge. The police called her husband to the station, beat him up and locked him up overnight.

The next morning, when he was released, she says he left the village. She hasn’t seen him since. That was six years ago.

Leader Of The School Cooks

Today Saroj is the state leader of the union for thousands of women who work as school cooks and kitchen help across the state of Haryana. She has helped her fellow union members lobby for better pay and other rights.

They meet periodically in a two-room, concrete building in the nearby town of Jhajjhar. On this day, scores of women have gathered to discuss persisting problems in their jobs. Some women haven’t been paid for several months. Others are worried about layoffs.

Saroj is multitasking: answering phone calls from women on their way to the meeting while listening to others in front of her and promising to take their concerns to lawmakers.

Then a new union member shows up, a skinny woman in a yellow tunic. She needs to pay her dues and sign her name in the receipt book. “I don’t know how to sign my name,” she says. She’s illiterate and looks ashamed.

“You’ll learn!” says Saroj, reassuring her. “We’ll teach you. No one is born knowing everything.”

Then she turns to the group, grinning, and says: “We’ll even make her the chief of the Matanheil block, right?” Matanheil is the name of the rural region the woman belongs to.

As the women burst out laughing, Saroj continues.

“We women are no longer lagging behind! We’re not lagging behind men anymore.”

More than 2 million of India’s poorest women work in public school kitchens across the country. It is a modest investment by the Indian government, but it means big changes in the lives of these women, and Saroj hopes, a way for them to live fearlessly.

This story was produced with help from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

 

Gov. Bill Walker signed the Alaska Safe Children’s Act Thursday in Anchorage. The bill, also known as Erin’s Law, was controversial for some and stalled by a legislature that was at odds regarding the state’s fiscal situation. While the fight over Erin’s Law may be done, two lawmakers who worked on the bill say there is still more to be accomplished.

The Alaska Safe Children’s Act requires school districts to provide age-appropriate child sexual assault, teen dating and youth suicide prevention curricula to all students. It includes a provision adopted from Bree’s Law that mandates teen dating violence education in middle schools and high schools. The bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Charisse Millett (R-Anchorage) says the act is a catalyst and not the end solution. She says she thinks the legislature is ready to continue addressing Alaska’s high rates of child sexual abuse.

“Now that we’ve elevated the conversation I think most legislators that I’ve spoken with are looking for that next step, and I think the next step is finding a funding source and putting a good, solid program in place that’s good for urban and good for rural Alaska. It’s paramount that we address the core issue,” Millett says.

Millett says she’s working on a few ideas for legislation that would create a more comprehensive support system for children and teens who are victims of violence. As with Erin’s Law, the issue of funding will be front and center.

A bill recently introduced in Congress would fund the implementation of child sexual abuse and teen dating safety curriculum in states where Erin’s Law or a similar piece of legislation has been adopted. The funding would go a long way to help the State of Alaska, which is currently grappling with an operating budget that’s outgrown available revenue.

During the legislative session, some lawmakers spoke against Erin’s Law, calling it an unfunded mandate and a burden to schools that are trying to operate with limited funding. But Rep. Geran Tarr (D-Anchorage) says people are starting to realize that prevention is the most fiscally prudent solution to Alaska’s problems with violence. Tarr originally introduced Erin’s Law in 2014, and was a co-sponsor of Millett’s bill.

“What everyone is recognizing — and if they haven’t I hope they will soon — these are really the low-cost alternatives,” Tarr says. “When you talk about something like an unfunded mandate I think Jeff Jessee from the Mental Health Trust said it very well this session where he said, ‘The real unfunded mandate is all the problems that come later.’”

The list of problems children face after experiencing violence or sexual abuse at home is extensive. Countless studies have shown that children who are harmed at home are more likely to have emotional and social problems, struggle academically and be involved in the juvenile justice system.

As adults, they are more likely to be re-victimized or become perpetrators themselves. Substance abuse and mental health problems can also worsen without intervention.

Alaska has some of the nation’s highest rates for domestic violence, rape and child abuse and neglect. The Alaska Safe Children’s Act is one of the state’s most substantial pieces of legislation aimed at addressing some of those problems, and Millett says it passed largely because of Rep. Tarr and Gov. Bill Walker, who advocated passage of the bill in his first address to the legislature.

“Credit goes to Geran for starting this battle last year and Gov. Walker for really putting the force behind the legislation. It was an incredible process,” Millett says. “It was obviously frustrating, but in the end it passed and we’re moving forward.”

The Alaska Safe Children’s Act created a task force which is responsible for the law’s implementation. Schools have until 2017 to comply with the law; that’s the deadline for the task force to develop the program’s curricula.

 

The Los Angeles Police Department is conducting at least one current criminal investigation into allegations of sexual assault against Bill Cosby, the department tells NPR’s Mandalit del Barco.

“LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has said his department would investigate any sexual assault accusations against Bill Cosby — even past the statute of limitations,” Mandalit reports. “The department’s public information officer, Det. Meghan Aguilar, told NPR that the police have at least one open criminal investigation that may have multiple accusations. The LAPD would not offer any more details because the case is ongoing.”

The news comes on the heels of new revelation that Cosby, 77, had said during a deposition in 2005 “that he obtained the sedative Quaalude with the intent of giving the drug to women with whom he wanted to have sex,” as NPR’s Krishnadev Calamur reported Monday.

Accusations of sexual misconduct against Cosby have increased dramatically in the past year; dozens of women have now come forward to say he assaulted them. In some instances, the allegations date back decades.

In the most serious cases, Cosby, 77, is accused of drugging and raping the women. The entertainer has settled previous allegations against him. He has never faced criminal charges over the claims.

Cosby’s admissions in the now-public deposition give new validation to those claims, Cardozo Law School professor Marci Hamilton tells NPR’s Here & Now.

Hamilton adds, “on the other hand, for the vast majority of these women, they have no legal option — because the statute of limitations has already expired.”

But Hamilton also said, “What we’re all waiting for, is for the younger victims to come forward who would be in-statute in a particular state. It’s unlikely that someone who operates the way that Cosby apparently did stopped at any particular age. So I assume those victims are out there and we’ll see that happen.”

Cosby’s statement came to light after the Associated Press sought the release of court documents related to a lawsuit filed against him by a former Temple University employee.

A judge unsealed the deposition for several reasons — including because he says Cosby is a public figure who has spoken out about moral issues including family life and crime.

Three U.S. senators have introduced a bill that would fund the implementation of Erin’s Law in states where it’s been adopted.

The bill would amend the Child Sexual Abuse Awareness and Prevention Act of 1965 and define standards sexual abuse awareness and prevention programs must meet to qualify for funding.

The bill requires the program’s curriculum “be based upon an assessment of objective data” in order to improve student safety and health, and to strengthen parent and community engagement. The program must also consider input from teachers, principals, school leaders and parents.

Programs funded by the grant would be required to undergo a periodic third-party evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the program. Schools would be required to use the results of the evaluation to improve their program.

The final clause in the bill prohibits the federal government from mandating, directing or controlling the programs developed by local schools.

The Alaska Legislature passed a version of Erin’s Law — the Alaska Safe Children’s Act — last month during a special session. The bill was first introduced during the 2014 session by Rep. Geran Tarr of Anchorage. The bill died in committee, but was reintroduced in 2015 by Republicans and Democrats from the House and Senate.

After a thorough reworking and much controversy, the legislature passed the bill introduced by Rep. Charisse Millett, a Republican from Anchorage, during a special session in June.

U.S. Senate Bill 1665 was released just as Congress was breaking for the Fourth of July. Spokespersons for Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Sen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young all said the lawmakers were looking forward to reviewing the bill.

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif, are sponsoring the bill.