(no subject)

[rivka]

Via Bitch, Ph.D.:

When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the town charged rape victims for the cost of collecting evidence.

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 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, Fannon said.

Fannon is the guy who was hand-picked by Palin to be police chief after she fired the incumbent because, as a member of her staff explained to ABC News, "we needed people with new energy and a new vision."

People, apparently, who don't want the poor overburdened taxpayer to have to pay for the police to do their damn jobs. At least, not when it came to dealing with some slut who went and got herself raped - because apparently burglary victims got their evidence collected for free.

Comments

[lietya.livejournal.com]

That is just... unspeakable.

[ailbhe]

*speechless with rage*

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

Know what's scary? If you do the math, that means they had 12 rapes per 5000 in that town (town is 5000 people). That's 0.24%

NYstate had 15 rapes per 100,000. NYC had 875 rapes in a population of EIGHT MILLION. Which is 0.11%. That's right - godless NYC has a rape statistic that is HALF that of Wasilla.

WTF IS WRONG WITH THAT TOWN?!

N.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

It's not just Wasilla. A lot of places charge for rape kits. It's a horrible practice, but it's also a widespread one.

[elaine-brennan.livejournal.com]

Do we know when the policy to charge rape victims for the cost of the exams was put in place in Wasilla?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

No, so it certainly might've been in place before. Fannon was just the guy who was enough of an asshole to complain to the newspapers about how unfair it was that the governor outlawed the policy.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

It's likely that victims are coming in to Wasilla from the surrounding area as well for testing/treatment. Possibly even from other nearby towns - often in small towns, rape victims have a lot of concern for their anonymity/privacy: people they know will see them at the hospital and then the word will spread.....

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

Considering that the entire state's population is smaller than Brooklyn alone, that doesn't give me much comfort.

N.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I don't think you can make any kind of valid comparison between them, because the vast majority of rapes are unreported. Do you really think that just 875 of the ~4 million women in NYC were raped? I don't. I don't see how that could possibly square with lifetime prevalence rates derived from survey data.

So maybe something is incredibly fucked-up about Wasilla, and there's a rape epidemic there. Or maybe there's something fucked-up about NYC, and even fewer raped women than usual report their rapes to the police. Or maybe it's something in between. We'd need a lot better data to be sure, and we don't have it.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Found via Google:

Alaska, where 90 percent of the state cannot be reached by a road system, in 1999 reported 83.5 rapes per 100,000 females compared to a U.S. average of 32.7 per 100,000 females, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports.

The rates for Anchorage (62.8 per 100,000 females), where more than half the state's population dwells, compared to the state rate (83.5 per 100,000 females) suggest that rural areas disproportionately shoulder the burden of higher rates of rape, according to the report. And data from the Alaska State Troopers suggest rural areas have the highest rates of sexual assault.

source

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

And all this does is make me want to ask, "What is wrong with Alaska?!"

And why do rural folk demonize city folk? Because it's obvious that statistically I'm safer in a city than out in the country.

N.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Eeeeuuuuwww. I thought the recent hoohah about raped women having their payments under UK Criminal Injuries compensation cut on the grounds of contributory drunkenness was crass and disgusting, but I think this tops it.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

It sure looks like making victims pay for their own rape kits was intended to reduce the reporting rate. This makes it look like it didn't work, or didn't work as well as the policymakers hoped.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

Canadian me is reeling. WHAT????????

[lawgeekgurl.livejournal.com]

I hate her so much. I hate people who blindly support her more.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Hey, she's a woman, she probably deserved it!

:::mutter mutter:::

[selki.livejournal.com]

icon love

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Do I have it right that the Alaska legislature put together a law preventing this charging the victim in 2000? (An Alaska newspaper says....

K.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

And more here. That this is old news does not detract from the original despicable situation, but it needs to be put forth as not-current.

K.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I figured that anyone who clicked through and read the article would realize that it wasn't current, given that the article I linked was about former governor Knowles outlawing the practice.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

OK.

K.