Wasilla from what I understand was the only town in AK charging. The city basically offloaded some ten thousand dollars to victims under Palin's mayorship.

Anyways, old news, there is tons (TONS) on this already.

The Mighty Corrente Building yet, and like her denial that she too should obey the law requiring parents to put their infants in child seats, it goes to show a pattern of behavior on the part of Palin. She is unfit for the job. It isn't a matter of being female; it's a matter of being wrong.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/When_Palin...

I haven't seen any evidence that Palin knew about or took a position on it, but it's a disgusting policy for sure.

UPDATE: I see the McClatchy paper Anchorage Daily News is just running the AP story, so it's not sourced to McClatchy. My bad.

This story seems to be more Palin smear and fear mongering than actual unique and evil Palin specific position.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-health-an...

It is still bad since it places additional burden on the victim.

I think gunshot victims pay for the surgery to remove bullets later used as evidence too.

Looking for links now...(not sure why I didn't bookmark them, this was sure to come up).

Wherever I first read the debunk, also claimed Illinois still charges victims...oops, jjmtacoma's link states that Ilse Knecht, deputy director of public policy at the National Center for Victims of Crime, says that rape victims continue to be charged for their forensic exams in Illinois, Georgia and Arkansas.

during her term. The AK lege and governor did in fact receive complaints and react with a state law banning the practice.

What, about that, has been "debunked"??

Well, I heard that this vile rumor is just more of the usual misogyny from the OFB. But then I did a bit more research and discovered that the real rumor is that it's a vile rumor spread by the OFB. The truth is considerably less pleasant. The truth is that Michelle Obama owns the company that bills people for those rape exam kits, and that she has been splitting the profits with Lyndon LaRouche and Rev. Dobson.

(or maybe got its first wider viewing there). Not surprisingly, when tracked down, it's not quite the issue as the Kos diarist makes it out to be.

In 2000, then-Governor of Alaska signed legislation prohibiting charging rape victims for rapekits. An article in the Frontiersman talking about the legislation is the source for the Kos piece:

Full text as quoted on Kos:

Gov. Tony Knowles recently signed legislation protecting victims of sexual assault from being billed for tests to collect evidence of the crime, but one local police chief said the new law will further burden taxpayers.

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.

(emphasis in the original)

So, what the Kos piece leaves out is this bit:

In the past we've[sic] 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.

(emphasis mine).

Palin is mentioned nowhere is the article. Read in full, it seems this article is mostly about signing the bill, and Fannon's objection to it on cost-shifting (insurance companies to town budget) grounds. I can't find anything that has Palin reacting in any way to the issue or objecting to the law in any way.

But "Palin charges rape victims' insurance companies for rapekits" doesn't make nearly as exciting a headline, esp. when the Palin part is also in doubt.

Freeper sites are also claiming that there were no rapes reported in Wacilla while Palin was mayor, so no one would have been charged on her watch, but I haven't been able to chase down any original sources for that. On the other hand, I can't find any support for victims being charged either, aside from that Frontiersman article's blanket statement (which seems to be really talking about the insurance companies).

While Palin as mayor would have been responsible for all the town's policies, it seems pretty crap to tag her with a policy there's no evidence she created, approved, endorsed, or even knew about. I imagine many town officers in many towns would, if having to decide between charging insurance companies and the town's budget, would pick the insurance companies. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that that's the reason behind the practice continuing in Illinois.

Kos can either be Tier Two of the Obama campaign, or they can be a source of news and information. They can't be both. They can try, but they will fail.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

And a characteristic one at that.

"You'd better get this straight. Wise up before it's too late." -- Sister Sledge

saving democrats from themselves is turning out to be both a full-time job and a thankless one.

crime statistics for the town of wasilla [i don't know if these are convictions or reports]. palin was mayor for 6 six years, beginning in october 1996. yes it does look like the number of sexual assaults went down in the year 1997, 1998, and 1999 [the police chief started charging in 1997, the bill to outlaw that was passed in 2000], so this does indicate a possible chilling effect -- if victims have to pay for their own investigation, they might not report the crime.

unfortunately, nobody has demonstrated conclusively that palin knew that the then-police-chief was doing this. the funding that he refused [or cut way back on] from the state was that which his predecessor had used for "contingencies" and nobody has listed what all those contingencies are, or which other ones the police chief didn't want the taxpayers to pay for.

finally, this guy at huffpo claims to have dug up the city budgets showing cuts in the relevant spending -- and maybe he actually did -- but in his post he points to the town's financial report [done by an outside auditor and signed by the mayor] which is not the same thing as a budget. so what he ends up demonstrating is that the town accepted less $$ from state [or federal, i forget which] sources. it's possible that the town had increased funding from local taxes, though it's unlikely, given palin's and the chief's apparent views on spending taxpayer $$. unfortunately, the huffpo guy never checked that out, which he should have done if he were doing true investigative journalism.

and in the police chief's defense, though it's not much of one i grant you, he wanted to charge neither the vicitms nor the taxpayers, but the perpetrators for the rape kits [via restitution]. the fact that his 2nd choice was to charge the victims rather the taxpayers is egregious, but as has been pointed out, it's not unique.

if democrats [liberals / progressives / obama supporters / anybody who's not just a gerbil on the internet] want to attack the opposition, they need to learn 2 things: how to do thorough research [you can bet the republicans do], and which actions taken by the opposition are truly attackable.

and really shocking and a legitimate issue. I have never heard of such a thing before this.

I must say sort of off topic that I appreciate seeing people do all of the research, and glad that this issue was brought to our attention. Watching this blog at work is most impressive.

To take another step to the side, I'm amazed that Palin continues to dominate media coverage. There is being nothing done on Biden, at all, and barely anything being done on McCain. I swear, PDS is going to be the death of the OFB. Palin's a donkey trap, and the Dems stepped right in and seem to love that their trapped. I'm not arguing knowing more about Palin is a bad thing, I'm arguing about the disproportionate her coverage is to all of the other candidates. This intense, voyeuristic look into everything she has done and is doing doesn't help Dems win, AT ALL. McCain can get, and is getting, away with absolute murder, right now. I don't get why people don't get that she's the lightening rod protecting McCain.

Hipparchia -- thanks for all the links!

I am suspicious of the HuffPo guy's article since instead of actual sourcing he just refers to the blanket link for Wasilla's document bank. That's bad research mojo.

The big investigatory coup of HPguy is that Palin signed!! the finance reports. First glance through doesn't look like the reports say what HPguy thinks it says, but more details on that later, since instead of doing RL work today, I'm submitting to the siren call of real data.

The reports have columns for both budgeted and actual revenue, so I guess the fact that he didn't dig up the original budget docs is ok.

But as Sarah asks why would a town charge the victims for a rape kit? I think the answer is implied in Fannon's comment (quoted above, in my previous cmt) is that no one's in favor of charging victims; they're deciding between charging a town budget, where $1,200 is a decent chunk of change, and insurance companies, which we all know are faceless, evil deep pockets that can afford it.

The rape kit headlines are certainly aimed at tying Palin to a heartless, cruel and impliedly intentional policy of white hot b*tchiness and lack of compassion. But, if you start from not assuming what you're trying to prove, it starts to look like cost-shifting and budgetary games that municipalities play all the time. Whether the town pays, or a health insurer pays, we're talking about passing-through costs to a larger number of people. It doesn't seem that anyone is arguing that the victim should pay, and certainly not as any kind of ethical construct; Fannon's comment that the perpetrator should pay is the only assertion that is justice-based, if deciding between victim, town, insurance companies and perp. I agree with him, btw (I hope we all do). Although it's probably not practical in many cases (cases in which there is no arrest or no conviction, eg). Fannon's second choice seemed to be not the victim but the victim's insurance company; while that may be a small difference technically, it's a big one in reality.

Chilling effect -- I'm not sure we can draw many conclusions from a dataset that ranges from 0 to 16 sexual assaults per year over a 12 year period. Btw, I'm assuming the Wasilla crime stats are reported crimes, not convictions, but in the interests of fairness, I only think that because in my smaller-than-Wasilla hometown, that's what 'Police Department Statistics' would mean. (see, truth in citation!).

Also, there were 0 SAs reported the year before HuffPo guy claims the new policy went into effect, but 1 the year of the policy, and 1 the year after. 0-1 is just not a meaningful range for crime statistics analyis. Stats The highpoint of reported SAs is in 2002, a year or so after the State of Alaska passed legislation prohibiting charging victims, but two years later, it's down to 2. If we were examining motor vehicle accidents (which Wasilla seems to have a lot of, for such a small town), the numbers for those are in the 100s, maybe there's some statistically significant conclusion we can draw about Palin's monstrousness from those. Oh well, I'm sure Huffpo will do all that legwork for me.