As Mayor, Palin charged victims for their own rape exams

As mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin became the only mayor in the state to bill rape victims for their own sexual exams, up to $1200 apiece.

I agree with Amanda. Palin's decision is inexplicable unless she somehow wants to keep sex criminals on the street. Do fraud victims have to pay for forensic audits? Do banks have to pay the police to watch the security video after they've been robbed? Of course not. There is absolutely no way in good conscience that a mayor could force victims to pay for the own rape examinations.

Comments

[americangoy]

That Mrs. Palin.... pure class.

So... banning of books (I love to read - that always makes me rabid and reminds me of Nazi book burnings), firing of the librarian who said "No!" to her royalness, trying to fire her sister's ex husband (a policeman) from his job and using her offices (up to governor level) and state government employees to accomplish that goal, and firing the man who said "No!" to her and upheld law and order against her royalness....

Man...

That Mrs. Palin.... pure class.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Pure class, indeed. The rape kit story is a genuine article. Sarah Palin, loyal ensign of the pro-rape splinter faction of patriarchy.

That alleged banned book list turned out to be an internet rumor. Or, at least, it's a standard compilation of books that American crazies have made a concerted effort to ban over the years. There's nothing in the content to tie it to Palin. If I heard that Sarah Palin got that list in her inbox and submitted it to the Wasilla town librarian for banning, it wouldn't surprise me bit, but as far as I know, there's no evidence linking the list to Palin.

[TB]

Yeah, by now it's pretty clear that she's unfit to be either mayor or governor, let alone VP.

[cfrost]

Yeah, I heard about the Alaskan legislature's bill regarding the rape kits the other day and didn't initially understand what was going on. I just couln't imagine that the victim of a crime would have to pay for the investigation. It made about as much sense as adding arsenic to baby formula. - Didn't compute. But then we're dealing with zombies here and lots of things don't add up.

[Bernard SG]

Palin and McCain make the perfect match. I'm so dazzled and confused that many women-voters get fooled by that outrageously anti-feminine ticket.
It's high time that prominent female voices stand up and shout out loud how harmful to women rights these people are.
Push the issue, Lindsay, we need the MSM to shed the light on all their positions regarding women issues.

Who bullied his wife in these terms: “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” and made this delicate joke: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."
John McCain, of course.

Sarah Palin had reportedly had this remark when Obama clinched the Dem nomination : "Sambo beat the bitch!"

Uhm...

[Eric Jaffa]

I fault Sarah Palin for firing the previous police chief for not being loyal enough to her, and hiring a police chief who supported charging rape victims for the exams.

However, I can't conclude that she knew about the policy from what I've read.

[Bernard SG]

Uhm Eric, I think you're confused here, she fired a police commissioner as a Governor of Alaska. The matter we talk about here is about her stance as a mayor.

Now, there's something though, as reported by ABC news : http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5778856

Alaskan feminist activists come to the defense of the fired Commissioner Monegan for he was highly pushing on fighting rape and violence against women while Palin fired him for her personal motives.

A very striking information there: "According to the FBI, Alaska is the first in the nation, per capita, for rapes, and second for murder of women by men. "

[cfrost]

She evidently never submitted a list of books to be banned, but she did ask the Wasilla librarian in a public forum -October 1996, during a City Council meeting- what she thought of banning books. The librarian's answer didn't satisfy Palin or she didn't measure up to Palin's standards somehow and she was asked in a letter from Palin to resign. The librarian had public support on her side and Palin backed down. Palin called the letter and others she had sent to other people asking for their resignations, tests of loyalty.

The “test of loyalty” business is easily as weird as asking the local librarian what she thinks of censoring books. Turning a small town government into a fiefdom whose functionaries' jobs depend on commitments of personal loyalty is, I don't know, creepy?

Palin's an odd bird, a little too odd to be the understudy for an old geezer who may pitch over into the orchestra pit at any moment. Of course McCain can always promise us he'll never die. (Like Gary promising Lisa he'll never die in order to get laid in the movie “Team America: World Police”. - Watch the uncensored DVD version to see how we'll get screwed.)

[cfrost]

Hey kids, catch Palin on TV talking up attacking Russia? Can't wait till she's C. in C. Party time!

[Alon Levy]

I'm so dazzled and confused that many women-voters get fooled by that outrageously anti-feminine ticket.

If you're confused, then don't rant about it.

What liberal activists think is best for women isn't necessary what moderate women think is best for women. It's the same with minorities: black leaders were busy saying that Clinton was as black as Obama, while on the ground, black voters were overwhelmingly pro-Obama.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Women who tell pollsters they are "moderate" may not be moderate relative to public opinion at large.

A lot of women who are swayed by the prospect of a female VP for the sake of having a woman second in command are perplexingly indifferent to Palin's anti-feminist and anti-woman policy positions, which you'd think they'd care about, given their alleged concern about the status of women in America. (Making people who may have been raped pay for their own rape exams is anti-woman and just plain inhumane. More women report rapes. I'm curious about whether men who reported rapes in Wasilla were held to the same standard. Rape kit fees shouldn't even be a feminist issue. This is about the rule of law and basic human decency. If this was going on during Palin's administration and she never heard about it, I want to hear her say so and explain why she was so out of touch. World travels fast in small towns. Don't tell me she didn't know.)

It is in fact perplexing why any woman who claims to be motivated by feminist concerns would be swayed by McCain picking Palin.

[cfrost]

Who cares about women who spend time thinking about feminist issues? They're not the demographic McCain seeks. Team McCain understands modern marketing and they understand who they have to reach. Get, for instance, a “respectable” figure like Cindy McCain declaiming on TV that Palin knows all about Russia because she was governor of the state across the Bering Straight, and voilà, Palin's an experienced Kremlinologist. None of your Brie & Riesling blue state women will buy it, but plenty of women married to guys like Todd Palin will.

Nothing to be perplexed about, it's all very straightforward.

[Pennant]

Well, if Alaska is the number one state in the country for rape per capita, that doesn't look good. The male/female imbalance is already pretty bad and that's just going to make it worse since men will continue to come for the resource industry jobs but women will stay away. That just means more horny men who may not be that discerning whether a female victim is single or married. Got to get those rape stats down. How might we achieve that? How? Hmmm, maybe if we made it harder and less worthwhile to report a rape...

[Bernard SG]

"It is in fact perplexing why any woman who claims to be motivated by feminist concerns would be swayed by McCain picking Palin. "

I'd say that it's because a great proportion of those women are not informed about what McCain/Palin stand for as far as women-specific issues.

Your today blog-post is a brick in the firewall, but there's a dramatic need to go further on the path of informing voters about the GOP ticket's anti-woman positions, it has to be factual and thorough: abortion rights, fight against rape and violence to women, equal-pay, daycare infrastructure, kids education, etc etc.

When you think about it, on a scale from 0 to 10 on women matters, the GOP ticket does not get a 1.

[parse]

What is a rape kit? According to Wikipedia, "A sexual assault evidence collection kit contains commonly available examination tools such as detailed instructions for the examiner, forms for documentation, tube for blood sample, urine sample container, paper bags for clothing collection, large sheet of paper for patient to undress over, cotton swabs for biological evidence collection, sterile water, sterile saline, glass slides, unwaxed dental floss, wooden stick for fingernail scrapings, envelopes or boxes for individual evidence samples, labels." How does this cost $1,200 rather than $12?

I'm not asking to excuse the policy, because even if the kits only cost $12, forcing the victim to pay seems both horribly insensitive and stupidly counterproductive. But I just can't understand the story since I can't fathom how these things cost enough to make it an issue either way.

[sad]

Bernard SG:

According to the AP feed in Salon.com the charge includes performing forensic exams of the results, not just the contents of the box. Also, depending on the lab the costs would vary. The SAP story gave a price range of $300-$1,200. The kit's pretty useless unless you have someone to run the tests on the evidence. Here's the link to the AP feed in Salon.com.

[Eric Jaffa]

Bernard SG -

Sarah Palin as mayor fired Wasilla's police chief, Irl Stambaugh.

Sarah Palin then appointed Charlie Fannon to be Wasilla's police chief. Fannon supported charging rape victims for the rape kits.

Palin may have known about the policy, since she had a “gag order” against city officials talking to the press without her permission.

Sarah Palin as governor fired Alaska commissioner of public safety Walt Monegan.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

My guess is that Wasilla was charging for the rape exam performed using the kit, and possibly the cost of processing the results. That would explain the dramatic sliding scale, i.e., if the test was administered by a nurse compared to a doctor, in a clinic vs. an emergency room.

[Mold]

If the victims have to pay, maybe they won't press charges or even file. That makes Sarah look good. Good. Good. Good. Icky liberals want results. That takes effort. Effort Bad. Bad Bad. Bad.

If you throw massive walls up, people will not vote, sue, or press charges. Then one may claim a reduction in lawsuits, crime, or voter fraud.

Yes, Ms Palin does think of herself as modern aristocracy. The librarian was ordered to turn in a resignation to spare Sarah the indignity of finding cuase for termination.

If she is elected, we will be very sorry.

[Eric Jaffa]

Important Update:

The policy of charging rape victims started under Mayor Sarah Palin.

She fired police chief Irl Stambaugh for not being loyal enough to her, and hired Charles Fannon who began charging rape victims.

========================
It turns out that Wasilla did not bill sexual assault victims for the cost of rape exams while Irl Stambaugh was chief of police. As chief, he had included a line item in the budget to pay for the cost of such exams. He had only just heard about the Mayor Palin/Chief Fannon policy today, and was just as shocked to hear about it as I was.

Checking the budget confirmed former Chief Stambaugh's claim. He had included a contingency of $15,000 in his budget for the department's 1st year of existence (1993-1994), $5,000 for 1994-1995 and 1995-1996, and $13,000 for his final year as police chief in 1996-1997, spending $11,625.

Duwayne Charles Fannon, his replacement, halved the budget request in 1997-1998, with a request of $7,298, spending $3,454. However, it seems he began the "victim pays" policy in the 1998-1999 fiscal year.
================================

[Windypundit]

The only way I can see Palin getting completely free of this one is if it turns out that the victims were only made to pay to the extent of filing insurance claims, and that if the exam was rejected by the insurance company, the department ate the cost.

If that's not the case, it's probably only a matter of time until someone in the media finds a rape victim to come forward and tell us.

Of course then maybe Fannon could fall on his sword... Hmm. I guess they may be able to muddy the waters enough...

[Amanda Marcotte]

My guess is like Lindsay's---the cost is in the processing. Which means the labor of going over the victim's body, cataloging the evidence, and sending it into a lab for DNA testing. There's also photographing of injuries.

[Dabodius]

McCain's fraudulent "Change!" is implicitly change from Bush, but here we have Palin's anticipation of Bush's "Ownership Society."

[Cass]

"What liberal activists think is best for women isn't necessary what moderate women think is best for women. It's the same with minorities: black leaders were busy saying that Clinton was as black as Obama, while on the ground, black voters were overwhelmingly pro-Obama."

I must have missed those "liberal activists" who were ever enthusiastic about Palin.

"My guess is like Lindsay's---the cost is in the processing. Which means the labor of going over the victim's body, cataloging the evidence, and sending it into a lab for DNA testing. There's also photographing of injuries."

It also requires a specially trained nurse, which even in a city the size of Austin often has to be paged at home, and asked to drive in to the hospital at any hour of the day or night. When I worked as a SA advocate I pulled more than a few two to four to six hour "shifts" waiting with the victim for the exam just to get started. Throw in the lab work, and $1200.00 in our health system would seem a low estimate.

[Cass]

I'm too distracted by the weather tonight to do justice to my feelings about this, so I'll just quote someone else:

"I’d like to make a joke here. I really would. But words fail me. What is there to say about a politician who believes that government should be big enough to provide people with hockey rinks but small enough that citizens in their darkest hour must spring for the cost of investigating the crimes committed against them?"

God damn John McCain for putting this country in danger of a person like this ever becoming President.