Rethinking Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention in Alaska

I’m not a professional researcher, academic, or policy expert. I’m a survivor of childhood abuse, and the founder of Mighty AK, an advocacy platform driven by lived experience and a desire to break the silence around sexual violence in Alaska. For the past three years, I’ve been combing through data, reports, strategic plans, and state budgets, including those released by the Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (CDVSA) under Director Diane Casto’s leadership in 2022.

This article is about the one glaring thing that keeps showing up again and again, something too important to keep overlooking.

When Boys Go Unheard, the Cycle Goes Unbroken

When we talk about domestic violence and sexual assault, the conversation often, rightfully, centers on women and girls as victims. But there’s a piece of the puzzle we rarely address: boys’ experiences.

And more importantly, what happens to those boys when they grow into men?

We know from years of data that men are disproportionately the perpetrators of sexual and domestic violence. And in response, important work has been done to address toxic masculinity, educate men about consent, and fund survivor services.

But if we’re being honest, that’s not enough.

What we’re not talking about is the silent epidemic of boys who were victims first. Boys who were never taught that what happened to them was wrong. Boys who were never given the language, safety, or permission to speak up. Boys who were raised in a culture where strength meant silence, and pain was something to either bury or turn into anger.

The Statistics We Ignore

Research shows that boys between the ages of 5 and 10 are particularly vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse. At that age, they are developmentally unequipped to understand, articulate, or even fully register what’s being done to them.

Unlike girls, who statistically are more likely to experience sexual violence in adolescence (often between ages 16–19), boys experience abuse at a time when communication tools are limited and emotional development is still forming. That trauma embeds itself early, quietly, invisibly, and often goes unnoticed for decades.

By the time they become men, many of these boys have never spoken about what happened. And, in a society that equates masculinity with emotional repression, any attempt to disclose is often met with disbelief, shame, or outright dismissal.

From Silence to Violence

When pain has no place to go, it doesn’t just disappear. It morphs into other things: rage, numbness, addiction, control, violence. You don’t have to look far to see this. Listen to the stories of men behind bars, and you’ll hear it again and again: childhood abuse, untreated trauma, silence.

In fact, studies show that nearly *68% of incarcerated men in the U.S. report experiencing physical or sexual abuse during childhood. These men are often repeating cycles they didn’t choose but never had the tools or support to break. And we are still failing to connect those dots.

If we want to interrupt the cycle, we have to begin earlier.

Right now, most of our energy and funding go toward responding to violence after it’s happened. In the last fiscal year alone, the Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault had over $32 million to address abuse in Alaska, and more than half of that came from the state. But most of those funds go toward victim services, not outreach, prevention, or early education.

If that model were enough, we wouldn’t still be leading the nation in rates of abuse. It’s time to admit that what we’re doing isn’t working. We need to go back to the drawing board, examine the data with fresh eyes, and design strategies that actually stop violence before it starts, beginning with our boys.

What Needs to Change

We need to create a cultural shift where speaking up isn’t just allowed—it’s encouraged. Especially for boys. Especially when they’re young.

While many of these strategies already exist in some form, most are still designed with girls in mind. If we’re serious about prevention, we need to rethink how we deliver them, and who we’re actually reaching. That means creating or adapting content specifically for young males, while also challenging the need for gendered messaging at all.

What we need:

• Early Education Campaigns: Age-appropriate media, school programs, and mentorship initiatives that teach boys about bodily autonomy, emotional literacy, and the safety of disclosure.
• Safe Male Spaces: Culturally informed, trauma-informed spaces where boys and young men can process abuse without fear of losing their sense of identity or masculinity.
• Survivor-Led Messaging: Campaigns featuring men who are survivors themselves, speaking out, modeling vulnerability, and reshaping what strength looks like.
• Training for Adults: Parents, teachers, coaches, and youth workers need the tools to see the signs, create safety, and respond with belief and care, not minimization.
• Policy Backing: Funding and policy support for programs targeting boys’ mental health and abuse prevention must be prioritized. This isn’t “men’s rights activism”—it’s violence prevention.

The Goal Isn’t to Excuse, It’s to Prevent

Let’s be clear: being a victim never excuses becoming a perpetrator. But if we’re serious about ending cycles of abuse, we must address root causes. We must stop seeing men’s violence in isolation from the silence they were groomed to live in.

The goal isn’t to shift focus away from women and girls. It’s to expand the lens, so we can intervene before trauma turns into tragedy, before silence turns into harm.

We need to engage young males earlier!

We need to start campaigning earlier for young males from 5 to 18 years of age. We need to make it normal for a boy to say, “Something happened to me,” and be met with care, not confusion. That’s how we change what it means to be a man. That’s how we start to build a world where fewer men become perpetrators because they had a chance to be heard before the damage hardened into silence.

It’s time we encourage boys to speak. And it’s time we listened.
– Scott Slone
Founder of Mighty AK

*Citation source: Wolff, N., & Shi, J. (2012). Childhood and adult trauma experiences of incarcerated persons and their relationship to adult behavioral health problems and treatment. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 9(5), 1908-1926. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph9051908