Is there ANY other city that charges rape victims money for a rape kit?

[bluestateguy]

If you have any examples, please share with us.

[hisownpetard]

1. Is Guantanamo a city?

[XemaSab]

2. The BFEE is raping me *AND* charging me for it as we speak!

:cry:

[rzemanfl]

3. I think in the Middle East they just take their word for it and then

stone them.

[likesmountains 52]

4. I know that in my town we do not charge the rape victim anything..

[GOPNotForMe]

5. I know someone in FL who was charged for a rape kit and I believe it was perfectly legal.

But then again, it's Florida!

[emilyg]

6. here you go

It's not just Alaska. 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."

According to Knecht, under the Violence Against Women Act, local governments have to pay the full costs of the rape kits. But some victims are still being charged anyway.

According to Knecht, reports from the field indicated recently that caseworkers in Georgia, Arkansas, and -- wait for it -- Illinois are running into the same policy as the one in Wasilla. According to a 2004 summary
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2008/09/vet

[dsc]

7. evidently Illinois did too

though Obama did try to get poor people exempted from the charge. As reported below NC did until very recently after an outcry sparked by news paper coverage.