Senate urged to reauthorize Violence Against Women Act

Victims for Justice supports Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s efforts to get Congress to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, also known as VAWA.

Murkowski (R-AK) and a group of bipartisan senators, including Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), reached a framework in December to reauthorize VAWA, a landmark piece of legislation signed in 1994 that provides critical resources for domestic violence (DV) and sexual assault survivors. The law hasn’t been fully reauthorized since 2013. It was temporarily reauthorized in January 2019 in a short-term spending bill, but the law lapsed a month later.

The framework agreement Murkowski and the bipartisan group reached includes provisions that strengthen rape prevention and education efforts and services and protections for young survivors, closes a so-called dating partner loophole, and includes an Alaska pilot program to empower a limited number of Tribes to exercise special criminal jurisdiction over certain crimes that occur in Alaska Native villages.

The pilot program would allow Tribes who exercise this special jurisdiction to charge defendants with crimes that co-occur with DV, such as violence against children or assault on law enforcement.

The framework expands criminal jurisdiction to tribal courts to cover non-Native perpetrators of sexual violence and other crimes. If passed by the Senate and signed into law, VAWA would help lower Alaska’s shockingly high rates of DV and sexual assault, supporters say.

“The rates of violence experienced by Alaska Natives are particularly horrific and statistics should shock us all. I repeat them a lot and they still shock me. According to a report prepared by the Indian Law and Order Commission, Alaska Native women are overrepresented – by nearly 250 percent – among female domestic violence victims,” Murkowski said during a speech in December.

Alaska faces an ongoing epidemic of violence “which has left long-lasting trauma for too many of our women, children, and families. We will not allow survivors and the needs of the most vulnerable to go unmet,” she said.

The House passed a VAWA reauthorization bill in March. Supporters of VAWA reauthorization are urging their senators to act, noting that since the pandemic began, many victims and survivors of DV and sexual assault have faced increased economic instability and threats to their physical safety and mental health.