Amanda at Pandagon writes:
I’m a little wary of this story about how Sarah Palin turned a blind eye when rape victims in Wasilla were forced to pay for their own investigations. Even if she is responsible—and she’s so firmly anti-feminist it isn’t hard to see that she could be—it’s all too easy for the campaign to argue that it was an internal police matter that simply wasn’t brought to her attention.
It’s a little hard to buy that Palin didn’t know about the policy, since the “gag order” she instituted — forbidding any city official to talk to the press about anything without Palin’s express permission — would have required Police chief (and close Palin ally ((For example, when Fannon ran for mayor of Mat-Su Burough, Palin was his campaign chairman.)) ) Charlie Fannon to ask Palin’s permission before blabbing to the press about how terrible it would be if taxpayers, rather than rape victims, paid for rape kits.
Even if Fannon broke Palin’s gag rule, how plausible is it that the police chief of a small town could break the mayor’s well-publicized gag rule with tons of quotes in a major state paper, and the mayor would never, ever hear about it?
It’s notable that the practice of charging rape victims for rape kits is now illegal nationwide — due to VAWA, legislation pushed through Congress by Joe Biden.
I think that this is something Palin can legitimately be held accountable for. Fannon was her handpicked police chief and close political ally. I don’t buy that ignorance is an excuse; if the mayor doesn’t know about a policy like this, even while the governor is pushing through legislation to ban the policy (not usually a quick process), then she’s not good at her job. Similarly, a mayor who knows that her police chief wants to charge rape victims for rape kits, but publicly does nothing about it — not even a press release disagreeing — is not good at her job.
That said, I agree with Amanda that this probably won’t stick to Palin.
But Sarah Palin’s a “new feminist,” because she’s hot. I mean, that’s the argument, right?
It might. We can only hope. This is the kind of thing that won’t play well with those soccer-mom swing voters that McCain wants to grab hold of. While there are still some women who espouse the comforting fiction that all rape victims “ask for it” (comforting because, since they would never ask for it, it follows that they’ll never be raped) they’re getting rarer, and they’d probably vote Republican anyway.
I’ve been busily spamming everyone I know with this. We need to make sure everyone hears about it, especially women on the fence.
Btw, there’s a legal concept called constructive notice that basically says that you’re responsible for knowing certain things and legally presumed to have known whether you actually did or not. It mostly applies in tort law, so that, for example, if a tenant slips and falls on an icy sidewalk the landlord can’t usually avoid liability by claiming they didn’t know the ice was there. I’m not suggesting that constructive notice applies legally here, but it sure should in practice: you are supposed to know what policies your direct employees are implementing, especially if you run a small shop. If Palin knew, she was appallingly callous, and if she didn’t know, she was a pitifully bad executive.
No, she’s a “new feminist” because she believes in women’s empowerment without predicating it on the right to abort. And despite not aborting, she’s managed to achieve power and (it would seem) life satisfaction. “Because she’s hot” might be how a sexist would describe that; YMMV. And I’m the resident sexist here, so step off my turf.
I think it is 100% fair to attribute the rape kit policy to Palin; she’s the mayor. Maybe there are some policy questions that she didn’t have knowledge of, but Amp is right that this isn’t one of them.
That said, Amp is also right that this isn’t going to stick. Despite the attempt at framing, the city didn’t ask women to pay for their rape kits; they asked the women’s insurance companies to pay for their rape kits. It doesn’t look as though a woman who said “but I don’t have insurance!” would get a bill, or be denied police coverage of her case. They just charged it to the insurance company if they could, at least up until that became against Alaska law. So this isn’t going to hurt her; there aren’t any victims.
That could change, if a woman comes forward with a credible claim that she was raped in Wasilla in the time period in question and was denied police protection, or had to pay for the kit out of pocket. That would create a strong reaction against Palin. Luckily for her, I’m pretty sure there isn’t such a woman.
Hm. Click all the way through to the source article and you see this comment (which I’ve edited slightly to fix typos, add quote marks where appropriate and fix the paragraph formatting):
So what we see here is now that the Chief figured “When the victim gets billed the victim’s insurance actually pays.” Sounds good in a quick read – “Hey, here’s a way to shift our expenses to someone’s insurance”, which is obviously not available for things like fingerprinting and other expenses of investigating crimes. Sounds good, anyway, until you think about things like deductibles, the victim having to deal with one more reminder of the crime when filing a claim, etc. It sounds like they probably weren’t thinking that the victim would actually pay out money.
$14,000 is a lot of money to the Wasilla Police Department, I bet. It’s probably 1/2 to 1/3 of a rookie’s salary. But this is where you have to step back from looking at this on a purely financial basis. Even if it was a case of “Forget the deductible, we’ll take whatever your insurance will pay and write the rest of it off,” it’s pretty shitty. This was a bad idea.
Wait — typically, the billing on a rape kid is $300. This could cost the city $14K? There are 40 rapes per year in Wasilla, population 9,000? To pick a city at random, Sioux Falls, pop. 137,000, had 178 rapes in 2005.
Either there were roughly three times as many reported rapes per capita in Wasilla as in Sioux Falls, or rape kits cost roughly three times as much in Wasilla as in Sioux Falls (or some combination of those). The cost of living in Alaska is notoriously high, but I wouldn’t have thought the premium would be that much.
I’m with everyone else: this was an extraordinarily bad idea. I read a comment supposedly by an Alaskan on a discussion board recently that a lot of dirt would come out because Palin, never expecting to rise to national prominence, didn’t bury the bodies very deeply. I don’t imagine this was quite what they had in mind, but this is the sort of thing that no one goes after you for very hard unless you’re a candidate for national office — and even now it may very well fall apart.
I’m still telling everyone I can think of.
Yeah, those numbers don’t make sense. Maybe they run rape kits for crimes other than out-and-out rape?
This story got national coverage from Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s “Countdown” on September 9. He spoke with an Alaskan radio commentator who indicated that she checked out the story with Eric Croft, the legislator who authored the 2000 legislation. Author Croft says he wrote this legislation specifically BECAUSE of the town of Wasilla. I believe you can find the “Countdown” transcripts or a recorded version of the show itself under msnbc.com. (Also, if you are curious about the original “Frontiersman” article, it’s under http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2000/05/23/news.txt.)
I would like to see this story get more coverage, as it’s pretty despicable. If you agree, how about forwarding it on to your home town paper?
Would there be situations where rape kits are used only to find there was no rape, and therefore no rape charges?
RonF,
a rape kit is a method of collecting evidence for potential later prosecution. The concept is simple: If you wait to collect evidence until everyone is sure that they want to prosecute (from the cops to the victim to the prosecutors) then it is too late to get the evidence you need.
Usually, in legal terms we are forced to choose between convicting more innocents (bad) and letting more guilty people free (bad.) That is just how error works.
Good evidence is one of the few things that actually improves the SYSTEM, so it can reduce both type 1 and type 2 error.
So, anyway: rape kits don’t provide evidence of rape*. They provide evidence of sex, and sometimes evidence of violence; they provide evidence (usually) of who the sexual partner was.
That evidence is independent of the charges. Rape as a criminal charge requires a lot of other issues. The evidence can be used to either convict someone or set them free.
If I were misidentified as a rapist, nothing would make me HAPPIER than to know there was a rape kit.
* in adult mentally competent people, anyway.
Well, looks like an attempt to include an img tag got my comment yoinked. Let me just post the link, then:
http://www.entertainmentweakly.com/blog/2008/09/what_the_hell_is_wrong_with_wa.html
In short, this town has an unusually high rape rate, and in one year it even bizarrely spiked to three times the national average.
Maybe they were trying to reduce one of their major operating expense?
Robert:
You truly are a vile person.
Silenced, the link you provided doesn’t actually back up it’s numbers. It links to fbi.gov. After digging, because they seemed pretty implausible, I found this link for wasilla’s crime rates.
North Carolina, home of the Silky Pony, who must be so glad about Sarah Palin, only recently changed their law. Palin would have had to submit to state laws, if such existed. There’s no proof that any person actually paid out of pocket for a rape kit.
How are there 40 rapes a year? There were 3 in 2005.
Bonnie, please refrain from calling other posters words like ‘vile’. I share your distaste for his position, but please call out the position rather than the person.
—Myca
How is charging the victims’ insurance companies any better than charging the victim? I don’t know about anyone else, but I always have a co-pay on insurance charges… not to mention, why does that make it appropriate??????
Is there really anyone who objects to tax payer dollars going to evidence collection in suspected crimes?
It doesn’t matter whether victims are billed through their insurance companies or individually. It’s totally inappropriate.
Thanks, Myca, but you don’t need to defend me. If Bonnie wants to think I’m “vile” for noticing that a woman can be powerful without believing in abortion, that’s fine with me.
I agree that it’s inappropriate either way, Kate. But the “women had to pay for their rape kits” theme presents a mental image of the sheriff holding out his hand and refusing to do the kit until the woman digs around in her purse and comes up with $400 in cash, and that’s not how things happened.
That was my point, Kate. In theory and at a first glance it sounds good, but then when you consider the actual details and the concept of how it affects the victim it breaks down.
I’m not much of a one for “how does that make you feel”, but in this case I think it’s a valid concern.
Not a defense of you so much a defense of this blog’s established comment policy.
Does anyone know what mechanisms were in place when it came to uninsured rape victims? I mean, call me a pessimist, but I doubt rapists were asking for proof of insurance.
—Myca
Fannon (Wasilla police chief) said in 2000:
“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.” He goes on to say he wants to bill the expense to the people who get convicted of the crime.
That implies that they billed the insurance company where they could and the taxpayers ate it where they couldn’t. And that he intended, if things changed so that the taxpayers were the first ones on the hook, that he’d try and go after the perpetrator for the expense.
Does this policy remind anyone else of the bit in the movie Brazil about suspects being charged for their interrogations? I’m expecting the news to come out any day now that we’ve been billing people for their waterboarding. If not yet, when Palin comes into power we surely will be.
Former governor Knowles says that the law was passed specifically because of complaints that Wasilla was charging complainants for rape kits. It still isn’t absolutely clear, but I think the most reasonable reading of the police chief’s phrasing is that when possible they charge the kits to insurance, otherwise, they charge the complainant. The commonly referenced article from 2000 also repeatedly refers to Wasilla as charging the complainants, and the law forbids charging either the complainant or her insurance.
I’m sure that someone will eventually track down the minutes from the hearings for this bill, and we’ll get more details.
That Frontiersman article has far too many holes to jump to many of the conclusions exhibited in this thread. Someone is going to have to cough up either some documentation or a live body who affirms that she paid for a rape kit out of her own pocket.
From the article I linked to, which is not the well known 2000 article, but is a recent article.
Wasilla charged victims, and Palin’s hand picked police chief wanted to continue doing so. Anyone claiming otherwise needs some better evidence than just calling former governor Knowles a liar.
Even in the 2000 article, it is hard to see how an honest person could read “the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests” to mean something other than the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.
Fannon’s statement is the reason that an honest person can still think that the department didn’t charge individuals. He didn’t say “we charge the victims”, he said “we charge the victims’ insurance company when we can”.
Basically, whose characterization do we believe – the reporter, or the cop. I don’t know, because I don’t know either person. But I do know that reporters mischaracterize things and simplify things all the time.
If I have time tomorrow I’ll do an investigative piece on this, and will call the paper and the department and try to clarify.
But, “we charge the victim’s insurance company when we can” doesn’t contradict “they charge the victim,” it just modifies it. “We don’t always charge the victim, we charge the insurance company if we can. We just don’t want to see the tax payer have to pay for this.” That description also matches the language of the law, which was designed to prohibit what they were doing in Wasilla: charging victims and their insurance companies.
If the police chief were disagreeing with the claim that they were charging victims, he could have said that they don’t charge victims. The newly passed law he was objecting to forbade police from charging either victims or insurance, so it would have been natural for him to declare that they never charged victims, but he thought they ought to be able to charge the insurance companies.
As it stands, there is no contradiction to be worked out. But investigate away. Your acknowledgment of the facts might convince someone somewhere, and if that article and the former governors statements are outright lies, then maybe you can make the news for ferreting that out.
Even if they charged the victim’s insurance company, and otherwise ate the costs themselves, how in the world is that acceptable?
Money charged to insurance companies is not free. Insurance companies often require deductibles and co-pays; they frequently raise rates based on if you’ve had to use them in the past; and they decide how risky someone is to insure based on past usage of insurance.
Furthermore, why should rape victims be forced to deal with their insurance bureaucracy in order to get a rape kit paid for? If my car is stolen and recovered and the cops take fingerprints, they don’t charge my insurance company for that.
I think that the McCain fans in this thread are pulling a bit of a debate trick — moving away from the real issue, which is that Sarah Palin went along with a policy of charging rape victims expenses for having their rapes investigated; to an completely irrelevant side issue, which is whether the rape victims were paid out of pocket or through their insurance policies.
USA Today also covers this story today.
That seems pretty indisputable, but we’ll know more in a week or so:
It will be interesting to see when the policy was instituted. If it was institute during Palin’s reign, I can’t imagine how she survives this.
The federal law that forbids what Palin’s administration did was written by Joe Biden and co-sponsored by Obama. John McCain voted against it.
I’m interested in the side issue, but I said right up front this was a bad idea.
It will be interesting to see when the policy was instituted.
Sounds like this Peggy Wilcox might know.
If it was institute during Palin’s reign, I can’t imagine how she survives this.
Bets? She’ll slough it off on the Police Chief. The fact that the focus seems to have been on soaking the insurance companies will get it passed off as just a dumb idea. I imagine that the campaign will figure that the people who will see it as a deal-killer are not likely to vote the McCain-Palin ticket anyway. And there’s a little fatigue built up right now with all the “Sarah Palin did this” and “Sarah Palin did that” stories that have turned out to be exaggerated.
Maybe I’m wrong. If she did institute this, it’ll come out and we’ll see. But that’s the way I’m guessing.
OK, well USA Today has a bigger time budget than I do, so I’ll just wait for their outcomes. Like RonF, I agree this was bad.
Pingback: Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Policy of Gouging Rape Victims Began Under Palin’s Administration
Sarah Palin WAS aware of this policy. In fact she even signed off on it in her local government budget.
“Palin, as mayor, fired police chief Irl Stambaugh and replaced him with Charlie Fannon, who with Palin’s knowledge, slashed the budget for the exams and began charging the city’s victims of sexual assault. The city budget documents demonstrate Palin read and signed off on the new budget. A year later, alarmed Alaska lawmakers passed legislation outlawing the practice…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.”
You can read the full article here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-alperinsheriff/sarah-palin-instituted-ra_b_125833.html
Would an insurance carrier even cover it? A rape kit is not a medical or diagnostic procedure, it’s a procedure for collection of evidence for legal purposes — outside the coverage of probably every medical insurance policy under the sun. At least that’s the position I would take if I were one of those insurance companies.
Insurance would certainly cover medical treatment following a rape (or any other assault). It would also cover any necessary lab work, such as tests for STDs. To what extent that overlaps with a rape kit, I don’t know, since I’m lucky enough never to have needed one, but I would think that the STD testing would be both medically necessary and germane to any possible prosecution, and it’s possible that DNA/blood tests would get folded into that.
But I’m not an expert. Sailorman, are you there?