Posted on 09/23/2008 6:44:46 PM PDT by hecht
Sarah Palin and the Liberal RAPE KIT LIE
Last week the vicious rumor arose that when she was Mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin made victims of sexual assault pay for their own Rape Kits. Surprise, Surprise, this one is just as full of crap as the the other rumors.
The Democratic sponsor of the legislation, Eric Croft, told USA Today recently that the law was aimed in part at Wasilla, where now-Gov. Sarah Palin was mayor. Yet in six committee meetings, Wasilla was never mentioned, even when the discussion turned to the specific topic of where victims were being charged. (The Matanuska-Susitna Valley, the surrounding region the most densely populated region of the state, and roughly the size of West Virginia is mentioned in passing.) Croft testified at the hearing where Phillips read the Juneau womans statement, so he must have known that it was a problem well beyond Palins jurisdiction, even if he chose not to tell USA Today about it. And of course, USA Today chose not to investigate the truth. Read more about the Rape Kit lie blow
Wasilla Debunking Kit Crimes on truth.
By Jim Geraghty
Liberal bloggers have cited the story of Wasilla charging victims for rape kits as evidence that as mayor, Sarah Palin backed cruel and insensitive policies. But just about everything we know from initial accounts of this controversy is wrong.
When the practice came to light, the state passed a law banning it, and the minutes from the state-legislature committees reveal several missing details. Among them:
1.Wasilla was not mentioned in any of the hearings. In a conference call with reporters earlier this month, Tony Knowles (the man Palin beat in her governors race) claimed Wasilla was the lone town with the practice. This isnt true, but he was far from alone in saying or implying this.
Part of the blame goes to the controversy-launching article from the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, which declares, 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.
It makes sense for a local paper to focus on the storys local angle, but this falsely implies Wasilla was an outlier. In fact, at a Finance Committee hearing, Representative Gail Phillips (R., Homer) read for the record, a statement from a woman in Juneau who had experienced the charges as indicated. Compare Juneau (population 30,711 in 2000) to Wasilla (population 5,469).
The Democratic sponsor of the legislation, Eric Croft, told USA Today recently that the law was aimed in part at Wasilla, where now-Gov. Sarah Palin was mayor. Yet in six committee meetings, Wasilla was never mentioned, even when the discussion turned to the specific topic of where victims were being charged. (The Matanuska-Susitna Valley, the surrounding region the most densely populated region of the state, and roughly the size of West Virginia is mentioned in passing.) Croft testified at the hearing where Phillips read the Juneau womans statement, so he must have known that it was a problem well beyond Palins jurisdiction, even if he chose not to tell USA Today about it.
2. The deputy commissioner of Alaskas Department of Public Safety told the State Affairs Committee that he has never found a police agency that has billed a victim.
Del Smith, the states deputy commissioner at the Department of Public Safety, testified in support of the rape-kit-charging-ban legislation during multiple hearings. During one, state representative Jeannette James asked if she understood correctly that Mr. Smith is saying that the department has never billed a victim for exams.
Smith replied that the department might have been billed, but he has not found any police agency that has ever billed a victim.
To clarify: In preparation to attend a hearing and support the bill, one of the states top law-enforcement officials found no case of a rape victim ever being charged. And roughly a month after 30 Democratic lawyers, investigators, and opposition researchers, not to mention reporters from every major news agency in the country, landed in Alaska, we still have no instances to consider.
The allegation against Palin in the nations most widely distributed paper a couple weeks ago An aide to a Democratic state legislator tells USA Today that women in Wasilla did pay out of pocket for their rape kits is clearly not sufficient, considering the gravity of the charge, the obvious motive to paint Palin badly, and the lack of any corroborating evidence. In light of Wasillas low number of rapes according to available FBI statistics (one to two per year, compared to Juneaus 30-39), and the fact that the Wasilla Finance Department cannot find any record of charging a victim for a rape kit, it is entirely possible that no victim was ever charged.
3. Three times, witnesses told the committees that hospitals were responsible for passing the bill on to victims, not police agencies. If the bill went straight from the hospital to the victim, without ever being sent to the police department, this would explain why no confirming paperwork could be found in the Wasilla Finance Department. This information also fortifies Palins claim that she was never aware of the policy, as it is more plausible that a mayor would not be aware of a private hospitals billing policy than of the police departments billing policy.
Lauree Hugonin, director of the Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, spoke at several committee meetings. She noted in response to Smiths comment that while he had not found an instance where law enforcement has forwarded a bill, hospitals have. It has happened in the Mat-Su Valley, on the Kenai Peninsula, and in Southeast, and that is why the bill is being brought forward.
At another hearing, Hugonin said, these charges occur as a result of hospital accounting procedures. The range of costs can be from between $300 and $1,000. The direct charges usually result from the accounting procedures at the hospitals and not the law enforcement agencies. She noted that there has been some difficulty in Mat-Su, Anchorage, Kenai and Sitka, and possibly in Bethel.
Also at one of the meetings, Trisha Gentile, executive director of the Council on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault, said some Alaska hospitals have chosen to separate some of the costs of sexual-assault exams. Hospitals are adding sexually-transmitted-disease (STD) and blood tests to the cost of sexual-assault exams, and the hospital makes a choice to bill the victim for those charges. Police departments are willing to pay for sexual assault exams, but it is an internal decision on the part of the hospital as to who pays the hospital bill.
From the beginning, the story didnt seem to add up. Nothing in Sarah Palins background suggested a callousness to rape victims; it seemed particularly unlikely that a female mayor would support such a bad policy. Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella told USA Today 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.
In recent days, some conservative bloggers have noted the strange coincidence of the same anti-Palin smears showing up on liberal blogs at the same time, suggesting some sort of coordination and have wondered if it reflected the work of a p.r. firm connected to Obamas chief strategist, David Axelrod. On Monday, a p.r. executive who has worked with Democratic campaigns in the past admitted he had created videos that included false charges against Palin, but claimed the Obama campaign had no official or unofficial role in the creation of the video.
Whomever they are, those who spread the lie that Wasilla alone had the rape-kit policy, and the Obama campaign itself, owe Palin an apology.
The media are sons of a motherless goat.
No one is talking about this any longer. Why are we?
This was a complex billing problem. Hospitals charged for “medical services” that could also be part of a criminal prosecution process. I’m sure it took a while to get enough smart folks in the legislature involved with the funding to take care of this. It was one of those problems of “who’s gonna pay?” and how to handle it rather than just paying for it. The hospitals are really to blame for not working on this from the get-go.
To blame Palin for this was and is beyond absurd. This Knowles character is a really winner.
And its a male teacher! He smears Palin every single day in class since she was chosen.
All the silly rumors on the web, every single one of them.
Eric Croft is from a long line of sleazy Alaska ‘rats so this is no surprise.
I like Sarah. This story is not going to make me not vote for her.
However, I think we need to stop talking about this one, and let it die. The more band width and “ink” we give it, the worse it is. The MSM has done enough damage on this. We look especially stupid if it looks like we’re denying it like denying the financial meltdown had nothing to do with the deregulation that Reagan began (and since has gotten completely out of hand...) or denying the holocaust. There’s a LOT of blame to go around for what’s happening in the financial markets and to say it’s “just the liberals” is denying us the chance to also clean our own house. If we don’t we’re worse than the libs are (who are in COMPLETE DENIAL), and it’s not going to solve the problem.
Back on point: Unfortunately, it’s not just “liberal bloggers” who are reporting the rape kit story. Even Fox News has reported it, and you can find it on their website on the Hannity & Colmes archive:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,424103,00.html
The thing that makes her look bad is that it happened during her tenure as mayor. Period. If she had no idea that was going on in such a small town with her police chief leading the cause to cut the budget with this point high on his list by fighting the state bill that would force towns to pay for the rape kits - that’s even worse.
I’d like to think we don’t know the entire story. However, Alaska has the highest rape, murder of women, and violence against women per capita of any state. That is fact. And the more information we have on this point, the better we can fight it, and the less ignorant and in denial we look.
The whole reason the age of consent in Alaska is 16 is because for every 50 men, there is 1 woman. This law has been on the books since the gold rush. (I personally, think it’s a shame that the law has never been changed. At least it’s not 14 like another state....)
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