North Carolina Also Bills Rape Victims for Evidence

Wasilla, Alaska, isn't the only place that has charged rape victims for the cost of evidence to prosecute their attackers. Minnesota Public Radio's News Cut blog finds that North Carolina followed the same policy as Sarah Palin's town during her term as mayor:

Last winter, the Raleigh News & Observer in North Carolina uncovered a similar policy on a statewide basis.

The vast majority of the 3,000 or so emergency room patients examined for sexual assaults each year shoulder some of the cost of a rape kit test, according to state records and victim advocates. For some, it's as little as a $50 insurance co-payment. For those without insurance, it's hundreds of dollars left when a state program designed to help reaches its limit.

Apparently, the practice is more common than most people think. said Ilse Knecht, deputy director of public policy at the National Center for Victims of Crime in an interview with U.S. News & World Report. "We've heard so many stories of victims paying for their exams, or not being able to and then creditors coming after them."

"The bottom line is these services cost money," Rebecca Andrews, a hospital's vice president of finance told the paper. "We do sometimes forgive. It's case by case. But where do you stop? We treat gunshot wounds, stabbings, abused children. No one asked for that to happen."

"I couldn't believe they would send me a bill for this," a rape victim from Pittsboro, N.C., told the News & Observer. "I didn't ask for this to happen. The whole point of me going was to get evidence for the case."

According to News Cut, Barack Obama sponsored a 2001 bill in the Illinois State Legislature to ensure that rape victims in the state were reimbursed for "out-of-pocket medical expenses, loss of earnings, psychological counseling, and loss of support income due to the crime."

A lot of issues that crop up during the heat of a presidential campaign fade into obscurity after they're politically played out. This one shouldn't. Any place in the U.S. that bills rape victims for the cost of collecting evidence should be made to answer for the practice, which manages to be both cruel to victims and soft on crime. How many rapists evade justice because their victims refused treatment to avoid an expensive medical bill? How many rape victims suffer damaged credit because they couldn't pay this bill?

Comments

This is an issue of "Liberalism"!

Liberalism has made it impossible for the state to pay victims by working the criminal to pay for the crime.

The "majority" is stupendously ignorant and only has the attention of a herd of cattle. It is "leadership" that moves the herd here-and-there. Liberalism is responsible for any charges to the victims, because the "state/county/city" is forbidden to force a prisoner into working to pay for their crime(s).

Workgangs, 12 hours of hard labor, only chance for parole when all costs of the crime have been payed for!

Democrats started this in their urge to gather "poor" votes to advance their urge to make themselves "rich". Obama ... a poor child of the "Hood" is "rich". Biden is "rich". Feinstein has stolen millions, maybe billions from the public ... and the yellow-dog-Democrat mob will only vote for these criminals.

Party "brownshirts" promoting the hatred for the Democrat's neo-Juden target: a Republican vice president choice. Goosestepping and shouting their slogans: "Jesus was an Community Organizer, Pilate was a Governor!"

"Palin's main qualification, she didn't have an abortion!"

"Palin-Pig! McCain-Dead Fish!"

"Progressive Party Over All!"

"Victory Welfare"

"where do you stop?"

The answer is obvious, you don't - that's why every civilized country on earth except for the USA has some form of socialized medicine.

Joe reasons, "The answer is obvious, you don't - that's why every civilized country on earth except for the USA has some form of socialized medicine."

The actual problem(s) involved have been studied extensively throughout history. The conundrum revolves around the ability of the populace to democratically redistribute wealth by direct taxation. As soon as they get a chicken in every pot that way, they insist on more and more benefits to grease the slippery slope to anarchy.

It has happened over-and-over, democracy-anarchy-tyranny-democracy, and is happening even now in a continuous human societal experiment that has had only one exception in the history of the human race: the United States of America.

At least we were the exception up until the federal government granted itself the ability to directly tax the citizens of the republic's states directly, and which the Framers of the Constitution had denied as a "right" of government.

They thought that they could forstall that inevitable cycle of democracy-anarchy-tyranny by forbidding the federal government to directly tax citizens and start down the slippery slope of redistribution of wealth.

Indeed, it workded! Right up until WWII, when, for patriotism, the "scoundrel" government started taking individual's money from businesses/employers (federal stooges to this day), even before their anti-constitutional taxes were supposedly due, and forced those companies to release personal information about wages, etc., against the 5th Amendment rights of those citizens.

Now, we might as well go along with the demands of communists, seeking utopia where they don't have to work and get "free" medical care. They can wait in line for service; be denied healthcare because they are eating McDonald's or smoking, taking unprescribed drugs, endangering their life with unsafe activities, etc.; and then watch some elite Super Delegate escorted to the head of the sick line. Need a kidney? Sorry, you're work position doesn't make you eligible for immediate transplant, you'll have to wait until more valuable workers are served first.

Got a sniffle? Why wait? You might get some good drugs to relieve your runny nose if you go see the Doctor. It's FREE. Doesn't matter that it is like going to the DMV and the "care" is missing from the supposed "free medical care". The hospitals and clinics will be packed, and no more private offices, either.

Anyway, this is no longer a nation of freedom. It is a socialist nation where the populace can demand more and more benefits for working less, and the "empathetic" federal government will feed that greed for the power it gives them over the "civilized" nation.

The populace should speed things up and start demanding "free" housing, and watch the government hop-to-it ...

... oh, they already tried that, didn't they? Didn't the government give houses to the poor for no-down-payment? Did anarchy result?

I'll bet things speed-up downhill for the "civilized" world. Look what "free" housing has done to the world's markets!?! IMAGINE THAT! Our socialist effort resulted in the entire world's market falling along with the USA!!!

Okay! Now start whining for "free" food, and we'll get a tyrant to fix the anarchy which will result when all the money is gone ...

Human beings just can't learn ... their greed is too great and their memory too short. Indeed, putting them all together lowers their intelligence to that of yellow dogs.

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