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The Latest Palin Smear: Making Rape Victims Pay

Submitted by MikeWas on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 23:38
in

What is it this time? Supposedly, then-Mayor Palin is to blame for charging rape vicitms for their medical exams.

The smear relies on a story in The Frontiersman, a Walssila newspaper, about passage of an Alaskan law that banned police departments from chargin insurance companies for the cost of a medical exam after a reported sexual battery.

The story quoted Wassila Police Chief Fannon as opposing the bill: "In the past we've charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer."

So, you ask - where's the smear? Palin haters have twisted the story, claiming that Palin - by virtue of being Fannon's boss as mayor of Wassilla - wanted to charge the victims themselves (not the insurance companies) for the cost of the exam. But unless you're intentionally misreading the story, you cannot possibly make that claim.

Chief Fannon's quote, and the article itself, were very clear: it was only the insurance companies that got the bill. Not a single rape victim has ever been asked by the Wassilla police to pay a penny for a rape kit. How can we tell? Not one has come forward - despite Palin's rise to prominence. This "story" only broke because one sufferer of Palin Derangement Syndrome, who happens to have a blog, also happens to have run across - and deliberately twisted - the Frontiersman story.

If even a single rape victim had been charged for a forensic exam, don't you think it would have come out during the governor's race - when Palin beat the guy who signed the bill? Don't you think it would have come out before the convention?

Of course it would have.

But that doesn't matter to the people who are willing to believe anything about Sarah Palin, so long as it's nasty.

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I'm not seeing the smear, here

Submitted by alex on Wed, 09/10/2008 - 19:21.

Sorry, but this looks like a straightforward reading of the frontiersman article. It appears that:

From 1994->2000, the city of wallasa charged rape victims for their rape kits. This practice was outlawed in 2000 by a state law and the police chief is on record as being against the change. The policy may not have been initiated by the mayor, but she did nothing to change it.

Charging the insurance company but not charging the victim make no sense and would constitute insurance fraud. Its possible that the police department had a policy of not persueing the fees, but the article doesn't say that and it seems odd that they would leave it out. Some jurisdictions have a fund that is available for people without insurance, but no such fund is reported to exist here. Finally, the chief stated that he didn't feel that the cost should be borne by the taxpayer, suggesting the the police department does not simply drop the fees.

The chief of police was hand selected by Palin, and with a staff of 53 for the whole town, it's hard to imagine that she didn't notice when he was quoted in the local press. As his boss, the responsibility falls into her domain.

So, under palins watch, the town of Wallasa had a policy of charging rape victims for forensic exams in the hope of collecting from the insurance company or, if there is a conviction, the perp. 

What confuses me is why the police department didn't choose to absorb the cost and then ask for restitution from the judge; not for the victim but for the investigation. This would have been an easy solution without the political baggage that comes with their chosen path.