ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A former police coordinator in the coastal community of the Bering Sea in Nome has reached a settlement with the city after officers failed to investigate her report of sexual abuse, her legal team said Tuesday.
Under the terms of the agreement, Clarice “Bun” Hardy will drop her lawsuit in exchange for $750,000 and an apology from the city.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska announced the settlement in a statement ahead of a press conference.
“The Mayor and City Council would like to apologize to Clarice ‘Bun’ Hardy for failing to adequately and properly investigate her sexual assault complaint in 2017 and 2018,” the apologies as presented in the settlement statements read.
“We hope today’s settlement offers Ms Hardy some measure of comfort and resources to help her regain her strength,” it reads, adding that steps have been taken to ensure such a situation does not happen again.
According to her lawsuit, Hardy was sexually assaulted by a man she met at a bar and who accompanied her home. She couldn’t remember leaving the bar and thinks she was drugged.
Hardy learned from friends the next day that the aftermath of the attack had been filmed and posted on Snapchat. The man’s girlfriend apparently followed him to Hardy’s apartment. She had a friend use a phone to answer as she confronted him, while Hardy lay motionless and unresponsive on the bed.
Shortly afterwards, Hardy reported the attack to Lieutenant Nicholas Harvey.
The lawsuit alleged that Hardy regularly checked the status of her report with Harvey for a year before another officer learned of it and brought Police Chief John Papasodora into the conversation. He said he would turn the matter over to the Alaska State Troopers to investigate her complaint and why Harvey took no action on her report, the lawsuit said.
Two months later, Hardy contacted Alaska State Troopers to get a status report on her complaint and was told they had no record of such a complaint.
She eventually left the department and filed a lawsuit against the city, Harvey, and Papasodora in February 2020.
Harvey declined comment when approached by The Associated Press on Tuesday. A message left with a listing for Papasodora was not returned immediately.
Hardy, who is an Alaska Native, argued in her lawsuit that the city’s failure to properly investigate was part of the systematic failure to protect Alaska Native women from sexual abuse and assault.
Robert Estes replaced Papasodora as chief in 2018. He conducted an audit and found that 76 of the 182 reports of sexual assault made to the Nome Police Department between 2015 and 2018 had not been adequately investigated. Of these, more than 90% were submitted by Alaskan women.
The Associated Press typically does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly, as Hardy has done.
Hardy said on Tuesday that she has relived her trauma over the past five years, but for good reason.
“My hope is that the City of Nome will stay true to the promise made in the apology and will follow through on measures to ensure that what happened to me does not happen again,” she said in the ACLU statement.
More importantly, Hardy said, he hopes hearing Nome take responsibility “helps heal the hundreds of other people who have suffered through similar circumstances.”
