I see, via Memeorandum, that the rape kit story has bubbled up into the MSM:
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. When it was signed, Wasilla’s police chief expressed displeasure.
“In the past, we’ve charged the cost of exams to the victims’ insurance company when possible,” then-chief Charlie Fannon told the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, the local newspaper. “I just don’t want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer.”
I don’t know when the practice started or if it is fair to pin this on Palin, but the craziest thing about the whole affair is not that they actually did it, but that they thought of charging the victims in the first place. I honestly can not think of one other crime in which upon reporting it, the victim is assessed with a fee. Now granted, this does not include false reports or things of a fraudulent nature, but real crimes.
Can you think of any? I can’t imagine someone getting hit by a drunk driver being forced to pay for their breathalyzer. No one would even suggest something like that. I can not imagine someone being viciously beaten being charged for the photographs the Police Department would take as evidence. Why on earth would anyone think it makes sense to charge rape victims for the rape kits?
As far as I am concerned, while going through with actually charging them is pretty perverse (even more so when justified as a savings for taxpayers), it is the thinking that even led to someone suggesting that the victim pay for the kit that is the problem. That is downright crazy. My dad was the mayor (and by nature of the position, chief of police) of our small town for 20+ years, and he would have shit an absolute brick if someone had suggested something like that. Can you think of a situation in which the victim is charged for services?
gopher2b
Saddam charged the families of people he killed with the price of the bullet. The Chinese did they same thing…..oh, you probably meant just the U.S.
Then no.
cleek
IIRC, in China, your family is billed for your execution.
we’re better!
oh really
Compassionate Conservatism.
Joshua Norton
The only experience I’ve had is in San Francisco where the City bills you for using its ambulance service. I don’t know if they’d charge a car accident victim, but they charged me $500 when I was having a heart situation and called 911 for transportation to a hospital.
Stuck in the Fun House
Paying for evidence then forced to have the rapist’s child. Hello, this is Sarah Palin’s American.
Dispatch from The Funhouse. You may think it’s downright crazy but wait till you git the bill for being Democrat!
Dreggas
Given what I’ve heard about it I’m not surprised. The fundie take (ie Palin) as well as the police take seems to be that whatever the woman did she probably deserved to be raped so why shouldn’t we charge her to help prove it? This is pretty standard for the GOP.
Of course what makes this more odious is the fact it was only this town doing it and the fact that it was being done on Palin’s watch while she wasted tax payer money on a recreation/sports facility. It’s even worse given she was lobbying for earmarks as a mayor.
Dennis - SGMM
Palin supporters will clap their flippers all the more over this. By their lights, those rape victims were asking for it and any ensuing pregnancies are a gift.
SpotWeld
Okay.. I’ve come across some partial explanations that makes some of this sound more like a case of red tape and
My imprecise understanding goes something like this (and I’m certain other commenters will correct me as I can certainly be wrong).
1) Rape kits are to be taken by medical personnel as police officers (especially those of small towns) aren’t trained for it.
2) The proper medical personnel are generally those located at hospitals and/or emergency rooms.
3) Therefore the cost of the rape kit is an expense incurred by the hospital. (The hospital’s supplies, hospital’s labor.)
4) Therefore (under some weird bureaucratic definition) this is a medical expense incurred by the rape victim.
5) Further, there is probably some equally bureaucratic rule about how police departments aren’t supposed to pay for anyone’s medical expenses.
6) So then the hospital (the party with the expenses that need to be paid) is therefore instructed to pass the cost onto the insurance company of the victim. (And if they have no insurance, treat it like the costs incurred in an emergency room by any other uninsured patient.)
Or something like that.
I’m not saying that’s the right way to go about it, just that seems to be the attempt at logic that was being applies here.
SpotWeld
I would also ask, why do insurance companies have a deductable on rape kits?
Mary
SpotWeld, I understand you’re just raising points found elsewhere, but what this boils down to is Palin: evil or inept?
Garrigus Carraig
Really, all police work should be charged only to the people who benefit. Everyone should be able to opt out of police protection & not have to pay for it. If the police start to run out of money for an investigation, they should appeal to the citizenry for extra funding — a fund drive, as it were. If a person is convicted, they should have to reimburse the victim for the cost of the investigation. If they don’t have the money, they should be executed & their organs sold to raise the funds.
CFisher
The Bush Administration and the tax dollars I’m obligated to pay to maintain it.
PaulW
Yes, the American taxpayers, forced to pay bailout for mortgage firms that already ripped them off with the whole subprime con game.
This is what the Republicans are thinking of when they promote the idea of privatizing and ‘free market’ b.s.
Don
I don’t think it’s an indication that Palin is evil or even necessarily incompetent, but I think it’s a fair thing to bring up as an indicator of the kind of ship she runs. We’re okay with beating a politician up over, say, graduation rates in their district even then they don’t have perfect control over them.
The fact that this went on and was (a) apparently unchallenged and (b) noticeable enough that it was noticed at the state level certainly demands we ask the question why it was tolerated or overlooked by the Palin administration.
SpotWeld
In this case, inept. I serously doubt she honesty thought that this was an expense that should rightly be placed on the victims of rape. Only that she was either inattentive to how this particular cost to the police department was being “recouped” or that she was generally incurious about such matters and just let the bureucracy accumlate at the lower levels of goverment where they were incapable of creating an actual solution for the issue. (i.e. only the mayor would have been able to create a special expennse class for the rape kits which would have alleviated the Police from having to seek out a means to get it off thier books.)
I would further note that situation like this; dense and mostly useless low level beureucracy is very much a result of a conservative attempt to “make goverment smaller”. Because she didn;t want it to be her problem and she didn’t empower anyone below her to find a solution (because that would increased the size of the goverment) things just slid down until it stuck on someone who couldn’t do anything about it. (As are the case of most insurance deductables.)
4tehlulz
>>I don’t know when the practice started or if it is fair to pin this on Palin
Why not? She was mayor when this jackass police chief, her hire, made these comments, and she didn’t exactly lead a pitchfork brigade after them.
SpotWeld
In this case, inept. I serously doubt she honesty thought that this was an expense that should rightly be placed on the victims of rape. Only that she was either inattentive to how this particular cost to the police department was being “recouped” or that she was generally incurious about such matters and just let the bureucracy accumlate at the lower levels of goverment where they were incapable of creating an actual solution for the issue. (i.e. only the mayor would have been able to create a special expennse class for the rape kits which would have alleviated the Police from having to seek out a means to get it off thier books.)
I would further note that situation like this; dense and mostly useless low level beureucracy is very much a result of a conservative attempt to “make goverment smaller”. Because she didn;t want it to be her problem and she didn’t empower anyone below her to find a solution (because that would increased the size of the goverment) things just slid down until it stuck on someone who couldn’t do anything about it. (As are the case of most insurance deductables.)
Mary
Whoops! Wasn’t supposed to post just one sentence.
Anyway:
1) No other towns in Alaska had such a fucked up system. The state had to pass a damned law because of what this one town was doing.
2) Billing the insurance company instead of billing the woman directly could still harm the woman. Whether or not there was an explicit rape kit co-pay listed, the company may have still had some weasel words somewhere to make a co-pay stick. The woman’s rates may have been raised after the kit was paid for. Or the woman’s insurance may have been cancelled after the payment was made. And if women without insurance heard from others that their insurance companies were billed, they may have thought they couldn’t file a charge without insurance, whether or not that was the city’s explicit policy.
The Republicans may be able to dodge this if they can frame it as “No woman ever had to pay a penny of her own money.” (That is nonsense: this should never have been a policy at all. But they’ll try the dodge anyway, because, hey, who feels sympathy for insurance companies?) What insurance companies actually did when they were charged for rape kits should be checked out. If we find out that only, say, three companies were ever charged and only one actually paid, this looks to be less of a big deal to many people. And the state may have passed the law in reaction to insurance company complaints rather than victim complaints. I really want to know more about the genesis of the new law before I assume that this, THIS is the story that will take the air out of America’s new pit bull sweetheart.
David Hunt
Rational points by Spotweld here.
No. Reportedly, Wasilla was the only town in Alaska that had this practice. So even if the practice came about due to some bizarre red-tape situation, it is a nightmare that was spawned and lovingly grown in Wasilla…but nowhere else. So even if there was no conscious decision to stick the rape victims with the bill for the Kit, it was still their fault. Also, I don’t believe for a second that it was not an deliberate effort to stick the victims with the bills. The Wasilla Chief of Police (the one put in by Palin after her purge of the entire towns administration) expressed his disappointment at the practice being made illegal by the the state legislature.
Spotweld, I can see where you’d want to find a rational explanation…and you did. The problem is that it also assumes that this was some sort of innocent mistake. All indicators are that this was a deliberate decision by the town’s government (headed by Palin) to stick rape victims with the bill. She and her cronies appear to be the obvious bad-guys here. I’d like to comment on how this is too stereotypically evil to be included in a book plot, but I’ve also been reading about the scandals in the Department of the Interior, today. That stuff is the type of thing that would cause a book editor would toss the entire novel into the slush-pile due the triteness of the villians.
Incertus
Here’s the real thing about this story, as I’ve read it. Wassila was the only town in Alaska that was doing this, and both Palin and her police chief complained when Gov. Tony Knowles signed a law forbidding the practice. Whether she initiated the practice or not is irrelevant at this point–they were openly opposed to the change and complained about it, so they were down with it.
SpotWeld
Sorry about the double post.
Mary
I expect weasel-wording from the Palin camp soon claiming that because the insurance companies paid, that meant the woman didn’t pay. I mean, look at this statement from her spokesperson:
She won’t be able to argue that she didn’t know about the policy or that she fought it — because it looks very much as if she didn’t — but she could argue, say, that the insurance companies paid and uninsured women never paid a penny. Which skirts the issue of what effect these charges had on women’s insurance policies, but gives her some space to maneuver if the right follow up questions are never asked.
croatoan
It’s not “rural police agencies,” it’s only Wasilla when Sarah Palin was mayor. “There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla.”
t jasper parnell
It’s not just Palin’s Wasilla
via
Rick James
Voting for the GOP.
Mary
t jasper parnell, that was still one fucked-up NC law, but they, at least, applied this across state and I have heard (but not confirmed) that they had a fund that was designed to help women who couldn’t afford the charges.
Nonetheless, this was still a fucked-up NC law, and no woman, rich or poor, should ever have been charged a single penny for this.
t jasper parnell
I agree its fucked up, beyond fucked up in fact, my point is not that Palin is creepy and evil but rather there are lots of places in the good ol’ u s of a, that aare filled with creepy evil fucks. Thanks god for those, the Tony Knowles D-Alaska, who put things right.
t jasper parnell
isn’t evil, I meant.
Mike Toreno
I asked on Pandgon why on earth the victim could be imagined to have any responsibility to pay for evidence needed by the STATE. The procedure, of course, involves performing a procedure on a victim to obtain something that the state needs. It’s not a procedure being done on behalf of the victim. The victim is letting the procedure be done in order to help the state.
Amanda told me that there is a tendency to think of sexual assault prosecutions as a service being performed on behalf of the victim and that is the sort of thinking that leads to charging the victim for the rape kit. That does explain it. It’s a warped and disgusting perspective, but if you have that kind of perspective, yeah, you could see charging the victim.
WIIIAI
Rape kits may require a medical procedure, but since it is performed for law enforcement rather than medical purposes, insurance companies should not pay for it, much less the victim.
I can think of victims being charged: when my parents’ car was recovered after being stolen, the police charged them for towing and storage.
t jasper parnell
Can we call McCain a liar now too? Please. At “least 16” of his “former staffers”
as lobbyists
Bubblegum Tate
I believe you meant to say that your dad was commander in chief of the town’s anti-lawlessness forces and response teams.
syl
So Wasilla, at least when Palin was in charge, was so crime-ridden that just collecting evidence of all those crimes after they happened cost so much as to be burdensome to the tax-payers. Did I get that right?
Stuck in the Fun House
I think at this point in the campaign, with what we know of Ms Palidan or (Have Bullshit Will Travel) it would be prudent to consider the above as false, or put simply a FUCKING BALD FACE LIE. There now, all better
alhutch
I’ve heard that Bush is charging room and board to his guests at Gitmo, and it’s just killing them…
Litlebritdifrnt
This is utter bullshit. Has always been bullshit, and would have continued to be bullshit had not the Alaskan legislature stepped in. If your house is broken into and peeps steal your tv and stuff, do the PD bill you for the fingerprinting? NO. If someone is murdered, does the State bill the family for the autopsy? NO. If you are shot by some idiot with a gun, does the State bill you for the ballistics? NO. This is a sexist and to be honest medieval way of treating victims of rape. As a woman Sarah Palin should be ashamed that this went on during her watch as mayor. That ALONE should disqualify her for the second highest position in the land. But the righty tighties won’t give a shit, Pah the rape victims probably deserved it anyway. Oh and if you get pregnant then you WILL have the baby. Give me a break.
Blue Raven
ISTR that Florida had to pass a law similar to the ones in AK and NC, but that within the last few months, a victim was pursued to the point of having a collection agency sicced on her by a FL hospital for the cost of her post-rape treatment. This being several years after the law was passed, the question remains whether she’s simply the first/most news-friendly case that it’s happened to since or that hospital has preyed upon other victims for the money and simply been paid off quietly.
zoe from pittsburgh
It’s pretty simple, let’s play connect the dots:
Sarah Palin is the governor of Alaska.
Alaska has the highest reported rape rate in the nation– 2.2 times the national average.
While Palin was mayor of a small, rural town they were the only city in the whole state that passed on the cost of collecting evidence for rape allegations onto the victim.
It happened on her watch. There is no evidence that she tried to do anything to change the policy. Her police chief openly supported the policy. All she has on her side at this point is that she said she didn’t support the policy– words are nice. What about action? What has Sarah Palin ever done to help prevent rape in Alaska?
Seitz
Look guys, we can’t sit here and say “the Democrats need to stop playing defense and start attacking”, and worry about fairness at the same time. They just ran an ad that essentially accused Obama of wanting to teach kindergartners how to fuck, and you’re worried about whether this is fair?
Did she put the policy in place? Who cares?
Did she have the power to stop it? Who gives a shit?
Was she mayor of the only town in Alaska where this was happening? Was it happening at a time when they were soaking the taxpayers to build a new hockey arena? Goddamn right it was, and she didn’t do a thing about it.
Stop worrying about whether shit like this is “fair”. Let the op-ed pages worry about that. This isn’t lying. This isn’t trumping up a charge. This is something that can stick. Especially when you know her views on abortion.
“Sarah Palin thinks victims of rape should have to pay the police to investigate the crime, and she believes women who are impregnated via rape should be forced to carry the rapist’s baby to term. Why does Sarah Palin care more about the perpetrators of rape than the victims?”
Mike in MI
Two good diaries over at dKos.
Link
At $300-$1200 per kit, that’s a lot of criminal activity for a small town. Maybe the 5am bar-closing that Palin fired her chief over had something to do with it.
Anyway, $14,000 is still less than Palin charged the state of Alaska for meals and lodging while staying at her own house.
And the reason the state of Alaska finally made the practice illegal is because they had to in order to receive federal VAWA funds. Which legislator had the foresight to require local and state governments to pay for rape kits in order to qualify for VAWA funds? That’s right, Joe Biden.
And which legislator voted against these provisions? John McCain.
robert fredson
Keep on flogging a loser, folks.
The sad fact is that many rape “victims” are in those situations in the first place due to irresponsible actions on their part. This might not sound like a nice thing to say, but most Americans know this. There is a reason why Kobe is still playing basketball.
Taxpayers should never be charged for irresponsible actions of private individuals, and I think (then) Mayor Palin and her police chief had exactly the right instincts on this one. It bodes very well for real reform in ’09.
Besides, America (outside of San Francisco and Cambridge, anyway), has overwhelmingly embraced Governor Palin and her amazing life story–the heartland of this country instinctively knows that she loves and cherishes Life.
The more your militant left jumps on this, the more the deeper you’ll sink into that hole you’re already in.
Stuck in the Fun House
Not bad spoofery. I really like the “Militant Left” twist, it’s so Karl Rovian. LOL
vaux-rien
The sad fact is that many rape “victims” are in those situations in the first place due to irresponsible actions on their part. This might not sound like a nice thing to say, but most Americans know this. There is a reason why Kobe is still playing basketball.
Yeah, you’re probably right. I expect McCain will use this in an ad campaign of his own, maybe he’ll include some kind of tax break for honor killings too.
Krista
Why do you have such a low opinion of men’s ability to control their peckers and where they put them? Misandrist.
Ed Marshall
If your house is broken into and peeps steal your tv and stuff, do the PD bill you for the fingerprinting? NO.
When I was about 20 I got my house broke into and the cops didn’t do anything at all. They wrote up a report. I asked them if they were going to fingerprint and they said no. My memory is foggy on this they may have actually told me something like I could some amount of money and they would. They told me to move to a better neighborhood.
I bet it *doesn’t* work that way if they were dealing with someone older and better off
liberal
Seitz wrote,
Damn straight!
Ed Marshall
The sad fact is that many rape “victims” are in those situations in the first place due to irresponsible actions on their part. This might not sound like a nice thing to say, but most Americans know this. There is a reason why Kobe is still playing basketball.
Seriously, I didn’t believe you existed. That “Palin supporters will clap their flippers all the more over this. By their lights, those rape victims were asking for it and any ensuing pregnancies are a gift.” I rolled my eyes at. I thought that was a silly caricature and you come along after all this time I still get blindsided by what sort of filth I live next to.
ppcli
“robert fredson Says: QUOTE
Keep on flogging a loser, folks.
The sad fact is that many rape “victims” are in those situations in the first place due to irresponsible actions on their part. This might not sound like a nice thing to say, but most Americans know this.” UNQUOTE
Hmmm….
“Loser”, eh? You know, you should email the McCain people with your brilliant insight. I hope they start using it in their ads. It’s a winner.
Jon H
Palin must have been doing a bang-up job as mayor if rape kit purchases in a town of 5,000 could have been so numerous that they put a burden on taxpayers in an oil-rich state.
I mean, WTF?
Is that sports center she had built some kind of ‘rape dome’?
Seitz
My brother lives in Anchorage. Next summer I’m thinking about going up there to play in the USGA Amateur Publinx qualifier, which is usually held in Wasilla. I swear, if I see that place, I’m not going to be able to keep from calling it the Rape Dome. Awesome.
Kerry Reid
The sad truth is, most POWS were in those situations because they were so inept they kept crashing their planes — at great cost to the U.S. military, and we should be demanding that they repay us, the taxpayers, for their reckless behavior in combat. It’s not a nice thing to say, but most Americans know that no dumb bastard ever won a war by being shot down for his country . . . he won it by shooting the other poor dumb bastard down for HIS country.
Kerry Reid
OOOH! OOOH! It’s the Blame the Victim Game! I wanna play, too!
“The sad truth is, most POWS were in those situations because they were so inept they kept crashing their planes — at great cost to the U.S. military, and we should be demanding that they repay us, the taxpayers, for their reckless behavior in combat. It’s not a nice thing to say, but most Americans know that no dumb bastard ever won a war by being shot down for his country . . . he won it by shooting the other poor dumb bastard down for HIS country.”
Kerry Reid
Sorry, didn’t mean to post twice. But blaming the victim is so much damn fun I lost control! I almost feel like a real member of the GOP now! Just a few more injections of Mindless Self-Righteousness(TM) and I’ll be good to go.
zoe from pittsburgh
The sad fact is that many rape “victims” are in those situations in the first place due to irresponsible actions on their part. This might not sound like a nice thing to say, but most Americans know this.
Seriously?
FUCK YOU. YOU SICK TWISTED FUCKHEAD.
Only a man without a brain could make such a statement. That has got to the the most fucked up thing I’ve read in anyone’s blog comments in a very, very long time.
Not only does Alaska have the highest rape rate in the country it also has the highest incest rate. Or are young girls who are raped by family members to blame for their situation too?
I hope your penis shrivels up and falls off.
Nancy Irving
The rape investigation, including the rape-kit procedure, is not a medical service but a criminal justice procedure.
Therefore, neither the victim nor her insurance company should be paying for it, even though the evidence-gathering is done by medical technicians at a hospital.
TenguPhule
…
Seriously, we disown this person from the male gender.
TenguPhule
$300-$1200 per test…and a town of 8,000 needed 12-18 per year….
WTF?!
Was Palin ruling over Rape Central or something?
TenguPhule
and a town of 8,000 needed *12-46* per year….
Bleh, stupid uneditable comments.
The Raven
TengPhule, “we disown this person from the male gender.” Oooh. I want to see you cut off his little piggie tail!
Rome Again
Shorter robert fredson:
No, robert, most Americans don’t know this. Most Americans do not believe that a woman dressing to look sexy “made” you rape her.
Xenos
It is hard to work out a logical and factual arrangement that would allow this policy, if mistaken, to be understandable. But Palin is not talking to the press, so she can’t get out in front of the issue. The McCain campaign will wake up this morning to another shit storm, and will take half the day trying to work out in committee how to respond to this. If they they try to play fast and loose on this, they can make it a lot worse by appearing to defend this policy. Moveon.org will have an absolute field day.
Over and over again, the weakness of Palin will leach into the campaign as a whole. Each time they screw up another surrogate loses credibility. You think Jane Swift is going to get listened to now that she made a fool of herself over the ‘lipstick on a pig’ brouhaha?
This is starting to look like a campaign that will break down due to natural causes. A slow process, but an inexorable one. Will need deft handling by Obama to avoid a short-term revival, though.
pharniel
conservative friend countered with this:
http://townhall.com/Columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/09/11/the_palin_rape_kit_myth
can anyone find the original arguements about the bill and it’s text?
Loneaok
The Chinese charge executed prisoners’ families the cost of the bullet. Sarah Palin is a fucking commie. Why does she hate America so much?
Mike Toreno
pharniel, that article doesn’t even deny the story. The closest they come is, Palin has never been in favor of charging victims for their rape kits. Who cares what she was in favor of, the question is what she did.
Nothing connected with the victim has any responsibility to pay. No attempt should be made to collect from the victim’s insurance company, because on the paying end it has nothing to do with the victim. The article talks about seeking restitution from offenders, fine, but that’s restitution from the offender (if convicted) to the state, because the state is who should pay because it’s the state that wants the evidence.
They don’t say Wasilla didn’t charge victims for rape kits. And I don’t care if Palin instituted the policy, she should have made it a top priority to get it changed upon finding out about it. But that appears to be the opposite of what she did, it was the police chief she hired after getting rid of the other one who complained that it was a burden on the community to pay for them.
anon
People are wondering why Palin would have made this seemingly bizarre choice, to require rape victims to shell out the cost of the rape kit.
Is it possible that she made this decision because rape kits typically include emergency contraception?
gary
A violent crime, say rape is committed and the person goes to hospital for treatment. A sexual assault evidence kit may be completed. The hospital may NOT assess a fee for the use of the kit but Doctors and nurses aren’t free.
The hospital bills for the ER, clinic or doctor visit to the person’s MassHealth, Medicare, VA or private insurance. If that does not cover the cost, then the person may apply for Victim Compensation.
That’s how the current system operates in most, if not all states.
How does that differ from policy in Wasilla that has so outraged (i.e. oh my God, McCain/Palin lead in the polls) liberals?
Well in Wasilla, the police officer says:
“In the past we’ve 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.
Ultimately it is the criminal who should bear the burden of the added costs, Fannon said.”
See the difference in the policy of Wallisa compared to everywhere?
In Wallisa, the city was charging victims insurance for the cost of the rape kit plus the cost of the medical personnel to complete the kit.
In most states including now Alaska, the state pays for the the rape kit but the hospital still bills for the medical personnel to complete the rape kit. The hospital bills victim’s insurance, or Medicaid, Medicare, VA.
See the big difference? Yeah, me neither.