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Former UAF Student Charged with Making More Than 1,000 Harassing Phone Calls
A former University of Alaska Fairbanks student has been accused of making more than 1,000 sexually explicit phone calls to female students in dormitory rooms.
By Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
FAIRBANKS - A former University of Alaska Fairbanks student has been accused of making more than 1,000 sexually explicit phone calls to female students in dormitory rooms, possibly dialing his way through a student telephone directory.
Audie A. Chikoyak, 24, of the Yukon delta village of Kipnuk faces eight counts of harassment for a spree of anonymous phone calls to three UAF dormitories in September and October. He was not a student at the time of the calls.
The charges encompass only a portion of the total number of the offensive calls.
The caller appeared to target Bartlett Hall, Moore Hall and Stevens Hall and may have used a campus directory because the calls went alphabetically or numerically through female dorm rooms, according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Police Department investigation.
The harassing phone calls were often made during the middle of the night and were made in large batches. On one day, Oct. 8, 2010, phone records show 473 calls were made from Chikoyak's cell phone, according to the investigation.
The investigation identified Chikoyak as a suspect using search warrants of several telephone companies.
Reached in Kipnuk, he told Alaska State Troopers "he didn't realize that it (the harassment) was such a serious matter and that it wouldn't happen again."
Eight of the female students who received calls agreed to be interviewed by the police and to file charges. One said she was called 16 times by an anonymous man; others only said they received a single phone call.
They all said the calls were of a sexual nature.
Chikoyak faces an additional count of fourth-degree promoting prostitution for allegedly offering one of the students $10,000 for sex in one of the phone calls.
In one call, the anonymous man said he knew where one of the students worked on campus, although he told troopers he did not know the women personally.
Chikoyak lived in Skarland Hall from January to May 2006 and Lathrop Hall from August to December 2006, according to campus records obtained for the police investigation.
Many of the eight women who pressed charges were residential assistants, student employees who help manage the dormitories, said University of Alaska Fairbanks police chief Sean McGee.
"The matter became serious when he (the anonymous caller) became persistent and kept calling," he said. "At some point they (the residential assistants) were afraid to do their job for fear that he might jump out of some kind of dark corner at them."
There have been no subsiquent reports of harassing phone calls of the volume reported in September and October, McGee said
Each of the nine class A misdemeanor charges Chikoyak faces carries a maximum one-year prison sentence.
Contact staff writer Sam Friedman at 459-7545.
