Pandemic raises domestic violence concerns
Apr. 28—Even before the COVID-19 pandemic began last year, 4 out of 5 Indigenous women reported being victims of sexual and domestic violence, advocates say.
The pandemic has raised concerns that those numbers rose as it became increasingly difficult for victims to access support services and leave homes they shared with abusers.
The coronavirus has created what some consider a pandemic of violence against Indigenous women. And while fewer women may have been able to seek help amid the public health crisis as they remained isolated in their homes, those who made it to support services showed the physical costs of weathering two pandemics in one.
"There was more bruising, more injury to a person's body," said Gail Starr, a clinical coordinator for Albuquerque Sane Collaborative, an advocacy and support group for victims of sexual and domestic abuse. She was speaking Tuesday during a virtual tribal summit on the issue hosted by the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women.
The two-day event is shedding light on the difficulty Indigenous women have faced when trying to escape abuse.
It's tough in normal times for women to ask for help without added worries over whether social service agencies are closed or services are limited due to COVID-19, advocates said.
During the pandemic, many people mistakenly believed agencies were closed when they were not, cutting down on the number of reports, said Trudy Tsosie, a victims advocate for the Northern Tree House Shelter on the Navajo Nation.
"They didn't realize the shelters were open," she said. "There was a rise [in acts of violence against women] on the Navajo Nation."
In the early days of the pandemic, victims also struggled to obtain protective equipment, such as face masks, so they could leave an abusive home without fear of spreading the virus, panelists said.
Counselors often had to convince women who wanted to report abuse that it was safe to come in to a clinic for help because social distancing and mask mandates would be in effect. That meant victims might be speaking by telephone with a counselor or nurse from separate room in the same facility.
"There were a lot more things they had to think about if they wanted to seek out services for being victimized," said Shannon Hoshnic, a member of the Navajo Nation who works as a victims advocate for Sexual Assault Services of Northwest New Mexico in Farmington.
A 2016 National Institute of Justice report found 84.3 percent of Native American and Alaska Native women reported being victims of sexual or physical violence at least once during their lifetime.
Of those, 56.1 percent reported being sexually assaulted, while 55.5 percent said they were physically abused by an intimate partner.
Some of the panelists at Tuesday's event spoke about their own challenges trying to help those who felt helpless during the height of the pandemic.
For many advocates and providers serving abuse victims, the pandemic brought home a shocking reality, said Alexandria Taylor, deputy director of the New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs Inc.
"One of the things we learned quickly is that advocates within our program were also experiencing challenges and some were even experiencing violence at home," she said.
"I think the pandemic took away the idea that it is us serving them. It created this continuity that we are them."
