To be perfectly fair, while that’s one possible outcome, another is that when Mom learned that Kid was pregnant, she finally realized what exactly Husband/Boyfriend was doing with Kid when “reading bedtime stories” with her. But she wuuuuuuvs him, and now that she knows, she’s going to sweep the entire thing under the carpet so he doesn’t get into trouble.
The doctor had no way of knowing what Mom was going to do here. That’s why reporting is mandatory for health care workers – sometimes the family is not going to come through for the kid.
What, mothers don’t commit or abet abuse anymore? What a happy turn of events! :rolleyes:
All the more reason to have somebody look into matters and ensure that things are as they seem. The mother might be a victim as well as the child, or one of her tormentors - but the doctors can’t make that call.
Amazing - a felon lied to cover his tracks, and pressured his victim to go along. Why, you’re a veritable font of amazing insights into the human condition today.
There seemed to be enough odd behavior by both the girl and the coach to warrant a call to child services. Again, it isn’t the place of Planned Parenthood to conduct this sort of investigation themselves, or even determine whether it should be conducted. Not their call.
Again my problem was with your so called cite, which I reiterate HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD. I can make that larger if yu’re haveing problems seeing it.
And planned parenthood was susposed to know this how exactly?
Sez you who has all the information after the fact.
Planned Parenthood has stated their policy is to follow the law. They’ve suspended, and fired, people who failed to report. I think it’s grasping at straws to talk about a possible secret policy where they flaunt the laws until someone gets caught. Employees aren’t stupid, they’ll figure out that even if the unspoken policy is to neglect reporting requirements, the first couple times an employee is thrown under the bus will send a clear message. The unspoken policy won’t protect anyone and they’d be better off enforcing their legal obligations, regardless of if their superiors take it seriously or not.
Frankly, you’re being dishonest here - you strongly imply that the plaintiffs lost the case when in fact they lost the discovery motion which had been appealed. The lawsuit has been remanded and is still active.
I said as much in my original post. I was merely linking this document because it was he best citation I could find of the original case.
I’m reminded of something Cecil wrote back in 1981, “When we are talking about the price of mangoes in Sumatra, I am not interested in having you drag in your opinions on the temperature of spit in Wichita.”
Oh please. The one time that bringing in unrelated issues is entirely relevant is when establishing someone’s utter hypocrisy. I’m not surprised you’re not interested in discussing it, but don’t pretend it has something to do with germaneness.
If you dispute the existence of numerous torture-related deaths in US custody, that’s one thing. That argument would be a hijack to this thread. But assuming you’ve read any of the various uncontroverted reports on this matter, all there is to discuss is the very topic you raised: how do you judge when a pattern reveals a policy?
Ok. Would you be willing to hold Bush to the “at least 720 unsubstantiated reports and at least one proven in a court of law” standard when it comes to torture of detainees?
Well, 800 phone calls to various organizations, some of which are PP, some of which resulted in a verbal agreement over the phone not to report, and some of which are in states where the not reporting is illegal, as reported by Fox News. That’s hardly a court conviction, I think you’d agree.
So let’s move past the word unsubstantiated. Suppose that CID, NCIS, and FBI investigated hundreds of reports of torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. And suppose that many of these reports were corroborated by evidence equal to or exceeding the evidence you provided (in many cases, testimony of officers, photographs, and written documentation). And that dozens of those reports turned into convictions under the UCMJ. Would that fit your above standard for pattern=policy?
720 documented cases of nobody breaking any law. Correct me if I’m wrong, but saying you won’t report the rapist of an underage victim isn’t the same as not reporting the rapist of an underage victim.
Over the phone, the staffers were under no legal obligation to tell her the truth, and under a pretty strong moral obligation to get the supposed rape victim in to a clinic to receive the help she supposedly needed. The cited article explains this rationale:
Now, you can say that the 800 phone calls mandate further investigation, but based on the above, the only policy you could say is revealed by the article is one of getting rape victims the help they need.
I might have missed it, but I don’t think anyone has suggested this perspective yet: is it possible that the nurse was only telling the girl what she thought would keep her there long enough to get vital information and to encourage the girl to get help? She may have fully intended to report the “rape”, but considered helping the girl to be a higher priority.
I could be wrong, but it’s something I would do in such a situation.
If that were so, Planned Parenthood could have stated that they had notified authorities and had met their lawful requirements. The fact that the nurse in question was fired indicates that this was not done.
I apologize for not responding sooner - I’ve had a couple of really busy days.
Oakminister, you stated that the nurse was attempting to follow the letter of the law. She most certainly was not. She did not report the suspected statuatory rape of a 13 year old child and she gave the girl an option to go to another state to get an abortion giving the girl a chance to circumvent the laws in that state. That is not following the law in the state of Indiana.
I do agree that perhaps the “other side” isn’t the most non-biased group to conduct such activity, and I do believe that law enforcement certainly should be involved in any type of “sting” operation. Hello Again, I believe that someone addressed your statement in another thread - doctor/patient confidentiality is superseded in certain situations (gunshot wounds and rape of a minor are two, I believe).
:rolleyes: Yes, the fact that I have a 13 year old child myself is the ONLY reason I am bothered by this at all. Have you stopped to consider that even if I had no children, I would feel the same way? I was actually a far more conservative person before I had children. I’m JUDGING her as someone who broke the law and did what I believe to be a morally reprehensible thing, even if that’s an unpopular stance here. I don’t think it’s ok for an adult to believe or suspect that a 31 year old man is having sex with a 13 year old and give the man a pass by not reporting him.
Hilarity, this is part of my problem with letting kids be solely in charge of such a huge decision - kids are nuts and they make all sorts of wrong calls. I’m not saying that a child should be forced to HAVE a child of their own but I do believe the parents have a right to be involved in major decisions of their children’s lives, particularly where their health and safety is concerned. I am saying that I believe any time an adult knows or suspects a 31 yr old is having sex with a 13 year old, they are obligated to do something about it, if at all possible. As a parent, are you cool with other adults hiding your daughter’s statutory rape from you?
Part of my problem isn’t just that the rapist goes FREE, but that the rapist likely continues to rape this 13 year old girl. How the hell is that ok at all? There are ways for the nurse to report the rape while the girl is still on site and get the girl out of harm’s way. A thirteen year old doesn’t likely know the procedures at Planned Parenthood. The nurse only needs to excuse herself from the room for a moment and report the problem to another person. This is something PP needs to even have a plan of action for, as mandatory reporters and some of the most likely recipients of this type of information, especially when they are involved in litigation for the SAME thing already. This may have been a “sting” by a group with an alternate agenda, but the last known incident wasn’t a sting. Why haven’t they made changes to their policies to keep this from happening again? Whether anyone else in this thread agrees with it or not, they are obligated to report such offenses, and as such, surely have a plan of action in place.
This particular incident happened in Indiana. Illinois is where the nurse was trying to send the girl to get an abortion. Question for our legal dopers: What are the legal ramifications, if any, of the girl crossing state lines for the purpose of getting an abortion which would be illegal in her home state? What about ramifications for the person who goes with her and poses as her parent, if anyone knows?
18 minutes of the nurse’s time is not so egregious that we should be this worked up over it. Seriously, she probably spent more time than that making coffee or chatting with a co-worker, since so many posters get to make all sorts of ridiculous suppositions in this thread. While I believe that the makers of the film had motives that I would call suspect, the fact that the nurse broke the law - twice - bothers me more.
I don’t believe this to be true. It’s “only” statutory rape if the girl is 16 and the boy is 20. When we are talking about a 13 year old and a 31 year old, I believe that’s something else entirely. Realize that I believe the purpose of a statutory rape law is to protect a young person from a much older predator that they are voluntarily having sex with. It would BE rape, were the story true.
Why? Again, we’re talking about rape here.
What about the case discussed later in this thread where it WAS a real 13 year old having sex with her 21 year old coach? That was a con by those two as well, but one to actually cover up real statutory rape.
This seems like a strange argument to me. How is the girl in LESS trouble by being 13 instead of 16 or 17. By the laws in that state, she is allowed to get an abortion without parental consent at that age and her boyfriend probably wouldn’t even be charged with a crime, depending on how that state’s statutory rape law works.
It wasn’t actually my intention to respond to every single poster, but a lot of people posted things that I obviously have a comment about. Sorry for waiting so long to reply. I will check back tomorrow.
Because it’s more important to me that girls and women of any age have access to medical care than it is to either punish rapists or protect girls from them. I think scaring a girl away from getting a wanted abortion and therefore ensuring she carries an unwanted fetus to term or takes risks with both their lives obtaining an illegal abortion is a worse form of violation than rape is and ultimately more damaging to her health and life chances. I was raped for years (real, forced rape, not “statutory”); I got over it. I was also a single teenage mother; that changed my life forever, and not in particularly good ways financially or vocationally or in terms of relationships. It’s a job that should only be for volunteers.
It’s irrelevant to me whether her parents/boyfriend/rapist might beat her or she just thinks they will but they won’t. Either way, she should not be put under the sort of pressure that might cause her to seek out the less safe options. Encouraged to tell her parents, yes. Forced, no.
PP is not my area, but in every mandatory reporter briefing that I’ve sat through you are taught to inform your client that there are limits to confidetiality, what they are, and what your going to have to report.
It’s more important to report this man than to help the 13 year old?
In far too many cases, if the parents are informed they will force that 13 year old to have that baby. 13 year olds may not be the most intelligent, straight thinking beings in the world, but they are far more capable of making a call as to whether or not their parents are flaming anti-abortionists than you or a PP nurse.
Do you have any idea what this involves? PP doesn’t know the name or anything about the man other than he is older than she is, so the only way that CPS could deal with this would be to essentially ruin this girls life. Good plan.
Apparently, only 18 minutes of the whole interaction was shown, I don’t remember how long the whole thing went on but I vaguely remember 30 minutes? Anyway, I am more bothered by the idea that you care more about the letter of the law than the fact that an anti-woman group is trying to get PP shut down.
Huh? If I remember the story correctly, is was consensual, making it statutory. No matter how you feel about 13 year olds having sex, if she consented it isn’t “just” rape.
What difference does it make how she got pregnant? If she doesn’t want to be pregnant, any way to block her access to that abortion should be eliminated. Women, and girls, are more than uteruses (uteri?).
It’s conceivable that the nurse wasn’t given enough information to report anything at that point. She may have been hoping to get the information out of the girl at a later appointment. Is she supposed to call the police and say, “There’s a 31-year-old man having sex with a 13-year-old girl, but I don’t really know who and where,”?