Woman who says rape wasn’t investigated sues Alaska city

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A former police dispatcher in a small Alaska town filed a lawsuit Thursday, alleging her colleagues in the Nome Police Department didn’t investigate after she filed a rape report.

Clarice Hardy’s lawsuit claims the inaction was “part of the city’s systemic and ongoing failure to protect Alaska Native women from sexual abuse and assault.”

The Associated Press does not normally name alleged victims of sexual assault but Hardy has repeatedly spoken in public about her experience.

The lawsuit filed in federal court on behalf of Hardy by the ACLU seeks unspecified monetary damages and a jury trial in Nome. It came after complaints by Alaska Native women were investigated by The Associated Press, the Anchorage Daily News and other media outlets.

The six counts in the lawsuit includes a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Last year, the ACLU sent a demand letter, seeking $500,000 on Hardy’s behalf if the city was willing to settle out of court.

“Those claims were essentially ignored, much like Miss Hardy’s have, and the city refused to negotiate with us,” Stephen Koteff, ACLU’s legal director in Alaska, told reporters.

The lawsuit also seeks an injunction to force the City of Nome to cease any discriminatory practices and ensure all sexual assault reports are investigated thoroughly. It also seeks punitive damages from the city and separately from two former police officers.

Hardy said she no longer felt safe in Nome and moved to her home village, Shaktoolik, where she said girls and men tell her similar stories of abuse.

“It reminds me that no matter how bad my trauma is, or how real my depression, is that I have a voice for a reason,” she said, holding back tears. “I can’t undo the harm done to the hundreds of women the Nome Police Department failed to help, but maybe I can stop this from happening again. Maybe that’s my purpose.”

Nome’s own police data showed between 2008 and 2017, only 8 percent of calls about sexual assaults against adults resulted in arrests with charges filed in the city of about 4,000 residents located on the Bering Sea coast.

Nome City Manager Glenn Steckmann, who has been on the job since November, told the AP he hadn’t seen the lawsuit, and wouldn’t be able to comment on pending litigation anyway.

Besides the city, two former officers, Lt. Nicholas Harvey and Chief John Papasodroa, were also named as defendants. Neither works for the police department any more.

“In some of those cases, Lt. Harvey conducted no investigation at all,” the lawsuit said.

Clarice Hardy