Violence Act will protect women on reservations

The reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which Congress passed last week, will give tribal courts in New Mexico the long-awaited authority to prosecute non-Indians in domestic violence cases on tribal land, according to women’s and tribal groups.

“I know it’s something the tribes have been waiting for, for years,” said Corrine Sanchez, executive director of Tewa Women United, an intertribal group in support of women based in Española.

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., who helped craft the provisions in the Indian Affairs Committee, said in a statement that the act closes “jurisdictional loopholes to ensure justice is done in Indian Country by allowing tribes to combat domestic violence in their own communities and through their courts.”

Currently, tribal courts do not have jurisdiction if a non-Indian sexually assaults or abuses a woman on a reservation. Federal prosecutors can prosecute but declined to do so in about 67 percent of sexual abuse and related cases referred from Indian country between 2005 and 2009, according to a 2010 report from the Government Accountability Office.

“We know the majority of these cases don’t go to court,” Sanchez said.

American Indians are 2.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted compared with all other races, and one in three Indian women reports having been raped during her lifetime, according to the Department of Justice.

Sanchez praised the legislation as being “historic,” but also emphasized the need for funding so that tribes can handle more cases and train officials who work with victims.

The legislation will bring about $1.2 million into the state for domestic violence and sexual assault programs, said Daniel Manzano, director of policy at the New Mexico Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

The funding in New Mexico will be allocated by the New Mexico Crime Victims Reparation Commission, he said.

Lynn GentryWood, executive director of the Domestic Violence Resource Center in Albuquerque, said 8.5 percent of the center’s roughly 3,000 annual clients are Native American.

GentryWood said the funding will help cover state and federal budget cuts of about 30 percent over the past two years.

The bill had been snarled in Congress for months, in part because opponents questioned whether the expansion of tribal court powers is constitutional.

The act, which President Barack Obama has said he will sign, is an expansion of 1994 Violence Against Women Act. It also expands protection for gays, lesbians and transgender people, as well as immigrant communities, and authorizes $659 million over five years to fund programs for housing, legal assistance, law enforcement training and hotlines.

In New Mexico, a tribal prosecutor was appointed special assistant U.S. attorney to try domestic violence crimes committed on tribal land as part of a three-year pilot program in 2011.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
— This article appeared on page C1 of the Albuquerque Journal