During last night’s Veep debate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said that a McCain administration would be fiscally prudent. She’s had experience handling budgets, she said, during her time as governor and before that, when she was mayor of the town of Wasilla.
Does that include balancing the budget on the backs of crime victims?
As it turns out, while Palin was mayor of Wasilla the town sought to save some moolah by forcing rape victims to pay for rape kit tests and their forensic analysis. Seriously: Would you ask a burglary victim to dust her house for prints and pay for it? No, you wouldn’t.
Indeed, when former Alaska Democratic State Rep. Eric Croft filed a bill requiring municipalities to provide the rape exams free of charge the only real opposition her got was from – you guessed it – Wasilla. “It was one of those things everyone could agree on except Wasilla,” Croft told CNN. “We couldn’t convince the chief of police to stop charging them.”
Palin supporters suggest she didn’t actually know the city was charging victims. That is absurd – it is hard to believe that in a city that small the mayor wouldn’t know what was going on with the police. That, or she was just a really, really outta touch mayor. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of her administration.
The rate of rape in Alaska is 2.5 times the national average. Alaska lawmakers in 2000 banned the practice of charging victims for forensic exams.
This article appears in October 3 • 2008.