Okay so right now might not be the best time to visit Anchorage.

Courtesy of ADN: 

In an unusual advisory, the Anchorage Police Department on Tuesday warned residents of the city not to travel alone at night in "isolated areas," days after an as-yet-unsolved double homicide occurred in a park along a popular trail. 

In the statement, police asked citizens "to be cautious" late at night, "especially if they are in isolated areas like our parks, bike trails or unoccupied streets." 

"If you do plan to be out late at night, make sure you travel with several friends and not alone," the statement said. 

Police did not offer a specific reason why people should not travel late at night alone, other than saying that "criminal activity often increases late at night." The caution came after a wave of homicides in the city, including several unsolved killings. The FBI confirmed Tuesday that they were assisting APD in investigating some of those cases.

I am not going to lie to you, there has always been an element of danger in this city even back when I was a kid.

For a relatively small population in the state we have had far more than our fair share of serial killers:

No state in the country has a higher rate of serial murders than Alaska. As was the case in most other states, serial killers in Alaska claimed more victims in the 1980s than in any other decade. Robert Hansen, perhaps the most prolific serial killer in the state’s history, was sentenced to 461 years of prison in 1984 after confessing to the particularly gruesome murders 17 women. More than half of the 51 serial murders that occurred in Alaska took place between 1980 and 1990. Not only does Alaska have a higher incidence of serial killings than any other state, it also has the highest violent crime rate in the country.

And of course the majority of them lived in or around Anchorage. 

We also have an extreme number of regular homicides, rapes, and assaults, many of them related to alcohol abuse.

This year alone we have already had over twenty murders, with four months left to go. 

Yes the state is gorgeous, but it can also be deadly. And despite what you might hear the grizzly bears are NOT the most dangerous predators.

When you grow up here you quickly learn the rules. When and where you will be the most safe, where you should avoid going alone, and at what times of the night the city becomes the least safe.

Now I would not suggest that tourists need to stay away completely.

Most of the city is quite safe and right now breathtakingly beautiful.

However if I were a tourist I would ask about any dangerous places to avoid (Fairview, Mountain View, and Spenard, for a start.) and at what times it is best to avoid going on walks along the bike paths or in the parks.

Now you know why I tell people that this is the best place in the world to live, IF you can survive.

Memphis rape victim sues over backlog of 15,000 untested rape kits. Including her own.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed:  

An anonymous Memphis woman has filed a class-action lawsuit against her city for failing to test an estimated backlog of 15,000 rape kits — including her own kit from 2001. 

According to the complaint filed on Dec. 20, over the past several decades, thousands of Memphis women have reported their sexual assaults and received rape kits — or “had body fluid samples removed from their bodies and placed within sexual assault evidence kits.” But scores of those kits were sent to the Memphis Police Department and left untested, allegedly resulting in “spoliation.” 

The lawsuit was filed by a single mother who was raped multiple times in the early hours of March 30, 2001, when an intruder broke through her window and bound her arms and feet. 

The woman says she was treated at Shelby County’s Rape Crisis Center, where her samples were put into a Memphis Police Department Sexual Assault Evidence Kit. But the kit was never submitted for testing, according to the lawsuit, and the intruder was never arrested. 

Memphis has previously acknowledged its enormous backlog of rape kits, with Police Director Toney Armstrong saying in November that the department will have 12,000 unprocessed rape kits “even after an initial round of 2,226 kits is tested,” according to Memphis’ Commercial Appeal. (The department received $500,000 in September to test the kits and $1 million to build a facility to house them.) 

In an interview with the Commercial Appeal, Deputy Memphis Police Chief Jim Harvey attributed the backlog to several factors, including advances in DNA-testing technology — which meant re-testing old kits that only tested blood types — and outdated procedures, such as police using staplers to bound envelopes of evidence together, or not testing kits when the victim knew his or her attacker. He also blamed the department’s lack of record-keeping abilities on an employee who was responsible for transporting rape kits into storage. That employee has since died. 

“[There] may have been some kind of document that Hyun Kim was storing this information in, but we don’t know, because he died,” Harvey said. “And when he died, everything he knew went with him.”

And law enforcement wonders why women are so hesitant to report a rape.

Even in today's so-called "enlightened" era you will find both men and women often jumping to the assumption that "she made the whole thing up,' or "she was asking for it," or "she sent him mixed signals."

Add this to the callousness of police officers, the shaming in the courtroom, and the isolation it often causes among friends and family members, and the real surprise it that ANY woman reports their assault.

Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight, Cleveland kidnapping victims, offer thanks for all of the support they have received.

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

Stylish and smiling, three women allegedly held captive in a Cleveland home for a decade offered thanks on YouTube for emotional and financial backing they've received since going "through hell and back." 

From Amanda Berry, 27: "I want everyone to know how happy I am to be home, with my family, my friends," she said. 

"I would say `thank you' for the support," said a soft-spoken Gina DeJesus, 23, in response to prompting from a narrator. 

And from Michelle Knight, 32, who wasn't a familiar face on a milk carton around town like the other two, came a sometimes halting yet defiant reading of a statement. "I may have been through hell and back, but I am strong enough to walk through hell with a smile on my face and with my head held high," she said. "I will not let the situation define who I am. I will define the situation. I don't want to be consumed by hatred." 

The 3 1/2-minute video, produced last week and posted at midnight Monday, was filmed in a Cleveland law firm overlooking treetops, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and Lake Erie. 

DeJesus' parents, Felix DeJesus and Nancy Ruiz, joined the heartfelt statements of gratitude, thanking the public for donations to a fund set up to help the women. More than $1 million has been donated. 

Ruiz encouraged parents with missing loved ones to reach out for assistance. "Count on your neighbors," she said. "Don't be afraid to ask for the help because help is available."

I surprisingly found watching this video a little emotional, not only for the terrible pain they were subjected to, but also how their mannerism indicate how it deeply it impacted them.

I have worked with the victims of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse and I can see it written all over these three. Especially the last one, Michele Knight.

I hope that they will fully recover and learn to overcome the nightmares, flashbacks, and difficulties learning to trust that often incapacitate women who have suffered similar violations..

Very close to being the truth.

You know I think that Fox News might even be willing to report on News Corp phone hacking just so long as those intercepted phone calls somehow indicated that President Obama was lying about Benghazi.

An advertisement in India that I think a few American men could stand to read through as well.

You know my mom made just about every mistake in the book, but she drilled into my head repeatedly that I needed to respect women and treat them as equals, and it was perhaps the advice she ever gave me.

I think there are many men, some sitting in Washington right now, who would have benefited from having a mother like mine.