I've been following this event in the blogosphere for awhile but I wanted to assure it wasn't fictional Internet material. The media, however, is now reporting on it and it's accurate.
Back in 2000, when Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the following event occurred and was reported in the local paper in the Wasilla area:
Quote:
Knowles signs sexual assault bill
Published on Monday, May 22, 2000 9:00 PM AKDT
JO C. GOODE / The Frontiersman / May 23, 2000
ANCHORAGE - Gov. Tony Knowles recently signed legislation protecting victims of sexual assault from being billed for tests to collect evidence of the crime, but one local police chief said the new law will further burden taxpayers.
The governor signed House Bill 270, sponsored by Rep. Eric Croft, D-Anchorage, outside the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) exam room at Alaska Regional Hospital. In attendance at the signing were members of victims advocate groups, law enforcement agencies and legislators.
The new law makes it illegal for any law enforcement agency to bill victims or victims insurance companies for the costs of examinations that take place to collect evidence of a sexual assault or determine if a sexual assault did occur.
"We would never bill the victim of a burglary for fingerprinting and photographing the crime scene, or for the cost of gathering other evidence," Knowles said. "Nor should we bill rape victims just because the crime scene happens to be their bodies."
While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.
Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon does not agree with the new legislation, saying the law will require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams.
In the past weve charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just dont want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer, Fannon said.
According to Fannon, the new law will cost the Wasilla Police Department approximately $5,000 to $14,000 a year to collect evidence for sexual assault cases.
. . .
|
: Knowles signs sexual assault bill - Frontiersman
It's now starting to hit the general media today:
Quote:
Palin's town used to bill victims for rape kits
By Ken Dilanian and Matt Kelley, USA TODAY
WASILLA, Alaska — In 2000, Alaska lawmakers learned that rural police agencies had been billing rape victims or their insurance companies $500 to $1,200 for the costs of the forensic medical examinations used to gather evidence. They quickly passed a law prohibiting the practice.
According to the sponsor, Democrat Eric Croft, the law was aimed in part at Wasilla, where now-Gov. Sarah Palin was mayor.
. . .
Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella said in an e-mail that the governor "does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test."
"Gov. Palin's position could not be more clear," she said. "To suggest otherwise is a deliberate misrepresentation of her commitment to supporting victims and bringing violent criminals to justice."
Comella would not answer other questions, including when Palin learned of Wasilla's policy or whether she tried to change it. The campaign cited the governor's record on domestic violence, including increasing funding for shelters.
. . .
It is not known how many rape victims in Wasilla were required to pay for some or all of the medical exams, but a legislative staffer who worked on the bill for Croft said it happened. "It was more than a couple of cases, and it was standard practice in Wasilla," Peggy Wilcox said, who now works for the Alaska Public Employees Association. "If you were raped in Wasilla, this was going to happen to you."
After calling Wasilla Mayor Dianne Keller for comment Tuesday, USA TODAY was instructed to submit a public records request, under which the city has 10 days to respond. As of Wednesday, the city had not responded to a request for records reflecting Wasilla's prior policy, including when it took effect and the cost to sexual assault victims.
In 2000, there were 497 rapes reported in Alaska, FBI statistics show. That's a rate of 79.3 per 100,000 residents, the highest in the nation.
Nationally, victims' advocates have for years reported scattered instances of rape victims being required to pay for their forensic tests, says Ilse Knecht of the National Center for Victims of Crime in Washington. Those complaints have subsided somewhat after Congress in 2005 passed a law requiring states to provide rape exams free of charge or reimburse victims for the costs, says Knecht, whose group supported the provision.
"The reason we passed the legislation was that we saw it was prevalent enough to be a pretty considerable problem," Knecht says. "There are no other victims of crime that end up being billed for evidence collection."
The Senate version of the legislation that included the rape-exam provision was sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama was one of 58 co-sponsors; Republican presidential nominee John McCain was not.
|
Palin's town used to bill victims for rape kits - USATODAY.com
This issue I suspect will become a larger issue, and I'm raising it because it does bother me quite a bit that this occurred. The idea that rape victims would ever be charged for the assault evidence (basically the rape kit evidence to test the rapists' semen, etc,) is very bothersome.
It does seem to me from reading the 2000 article that Palin did have knowledge and consent to it. Wasilla is a small town, she appointed the chief being quoted, and she has claimed she was the 'person with the responsibilities' in her comments to the public recently. Although I certainly don't think she is pro-rapist because that would be absurd, it seems utterly callous to cite saving taxpayer money as a reason to charge raped women and others for collecting the rape evidence from them. In fact, it even deters reporting the crime because poor women can't afford to pay it.
She denies she ever supported charging these victims, but the denial coming only now isn't credible to me. As the ancient maxim goes:
qui tacet consentire videtur: He who keeps silent is assumed to consent; silence gives consent.
If she had objected, it would have been front and centre back when the incidents were occurring, thus never needing a law to be passed to prevent it. It took a state law to stop it. She was apparently silent when it became big enough an issue that a state law was being proposed to stop it, and yet the practice continued right until the state law was passed. The AK state police and other municipalities plus the governor were expressing outrage at the practice, and nothing stopped the practice in Wasilla. No objecting comments by her appear in the 2000 article to her police chief--whom she appointed--even when he went on the record when the law was enacted to express his opposition because such rape kit tests would otherwise be paid by taxpayers. Wasilla is also a small town, and by her own comments at the RNC and on other stumps, she claims as mayor she was the one with executive responsibility for the town.
What also bothers me is that she did indeed hire lobbyists to get money from Washington and did receive all sorts of large funding for projects, but for the sake of saving between $5,000 to $14,000 a year, women had to pay up for Wasilla to test them to get evidence to charge their rapists.
The practice of charging rape victims for rape kit evidence is now required via funding incentives by federal law, but what's also noticed by me today is that Biden sponsored it, Obama co-sponsored it with 58 others, but McCain did not.
Whilst the claim has not been made against Biden, when I hear Palin say at the RNC that Obama has "not a single major law or even a reform," I think it's things like this that dispel such a remark as untruthful, and even leaves her and McCain for their own things to answer for things he has helped pass.
If dedicated McCain/Palin supporters get outraged by the theme of my thread, so be it, but I'd just like to state up front that it's not my intent to taunt and troll by picking this theme and expressing my sentiments on it.
This subject has bothered me for the last few days, and it does need public discussion IMO. It's stuff like this that I think people ought to be talking about insofar as analysing tickets, judgements, views, etc, and have a decent conversation about it. What I'm seeing here just seems so callous to me on McCain and Palin for which Obama and Biden ought to be thanked for curing.
A woman who has just been raped and must endure additional humiliation of this:
plus vaginal investigation and swabbings, etc, should never have been humiliated, insulted and burdened by their own town police to have to personally pay for the collection of the evidence just so her attacker can be held accountable for his serious body violation and crime. And from a crime enforcement perspective, it just seem ludicrous and helpful to rapists rather than rape victims insofar as encouraging raped women to report the crime and/or for collection of incriminating evidence of that crime.