Alaska is the rape capitol of the United States
In its short history as a state, Alaska has earned an unnerving epithet: It is the rape capital of the U.S. At nearly 80 rapes per 100,000, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, Alaska’s rape rate is almost three times the national average; for child sexual assault, it’s nearly six times. And, according to the 2010 Alaska Victimization Survey, the most comprehensive data to date, 59 percent of Alaskan women have been victims of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, or both.
But those numbers, say researchers, just skim the surface, since sex crimes are generally underreported, and may be particularly underreported in Alaska for cultural reasons. “Those numbers are conservative,” says Ann Rausch, a program coordinator at Alaska’s Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. “They’re still staggering.”
The causes of the violence are complex and entrenched. Government officials, law enforcement personnel, and victim advocates note the state’s surfeit of risk factors, from an abundance of male-dominated industries, like oil drilling and the military, to the state’s vast geography, with many communities that have no roads and little law enforcement. “There are so many factors that tip the scale for Alaska,” says Linda Chamberlain, executive director of the Alaska Family Violence Prevention Project. Not the least among them: the lack of strong law enforcement presence, or support services of any kind, in remote towns like Tanana. “It’s easier for perpetrators to isolate their victims and not get caught. And for people not to get help.”
Some believe that this fact both attracts and encourages criminals. The suspect for a recent rape in southwest hub community of Dillingham, for instance, was a white man who’d just arrived from somewhere in the Lower 48 to take a job at the Wells Fargo in town. “Because it happens in rural Alaska,” one victim advocate cautions, “doesn’t mean it’s only rural Alaskans who are a part of it.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/rape-culture-in-the-alaskan-wilderness/379976/
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's the same here in the PacNW - we're boring unless something sensational happens
Everything west of the Mississippi is called California
Sad, too, as PacNW is the best part of the Lower 48. If I weren't living in Alaska, I'd be in Washington or Oregon. Beautiful states.
I thought it would have been kind of interesting to DU that we have a unity ticket for governor this year comprised of a moderate Republican (now officially "undeclared"
and the former Democratic candidate for governor, who joined forces after the primary to defeat Sean Parnell, the evil dude I described above, since neither of them could have won in a three-man race. I posted a couple of links ... no takers. 
The only way you get to Juneau is by boat or plane. At least from Anchorage you can drive more than 50 miles out of town.
