Weekly News Update

September 22, 2008 |
Valor

Week of September 15th
LA Times “California Legislature passes budget to governor”
The California Legislature voted “Friday to send Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger the final measures needed to resolve the budget deadlock that had dragged on a record 81 days past the start of the fiscal year.” The budget provides funding to education and social services, “but not enough to avoid cutbacks in schools, healthcare facilities and payments to the disabled, elderly and blind.”
The budget does not include any new taxes. The “Republicans rejected assertions from Democrats and Schwarzenegger that the state needs to raise more revenue to ensure long-term fiscal stability.”
Click here to continue reading LA Times article.
Other articles of interest include:

Boyhood Shadows
One of CALCASA’s members agencies, the Monterey County Rape Crisis Center, has been working with filmmakers for the last year on a documentary about male sexual abuse. The documentary is called, Boyhood Shadows, and the Monterey County Weekly ran a profile of the film last week.
The film premiere is tonight, Monday September 22nd! It begins at 7:00 p.m. and the proceeds will benefit the Monterey County Rape Crisis Center’s Child Abuse Prevention Education Program which reaches over 5,000 public school children each year. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door.

USA Today: “Palin’s town used to bill victims for rape kits”
Last week, USA today reported that in 2000, “Alaska lawmakers learned that rural police agencies had been billing rape victims or their insurance companies $500 to $1,200 for the costs of the forensic medical examinations used to gather evidence. They quickly passed a law prohibiting the practice.”
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has received criticism from some Democrats such as former Alaska governor Tony Knowles, about this issue. Knowles signed the “rape-kit bill into law, but was defeated by Palin in 2006.” Questions have been raised about “Palin’s commitment to women’s issues and crime victims.”
Click here to continue reading.
Just Detention International (JDI)
Stop Prisoner Rape has changed its name to Just Detention International (JDI). While the name is new, JDI’s mission remains the same: to stop sexual abuse in all forms of detention.
JDI’s mailing address and phone number have not changed, but the website is now: www.justdetention.org
“Trapped in the Treatment Mall”
Tom McNichol, a contributing writer to California Lawyer, recently wrote an interesting article on the Coalinga State Hospital. The hospital is “the nation’s largest and most expensive hospital for housing and treating men who have been declared to be sexually violent predators–or SVPs…”

Each of the patients in Coalinga has served a full sentence in state prison for committing one or more serious sexual offenses, usually child molestation or rape. But instead of being released, they continue to be denied freedom under a twelve-year-old California law that lets the state at once declare offenders to be SVPs and commit them to a state psychiatric facility.
Initially, the limit of internment was set at two years, subject to renewal. But with the 2006 passage of Proposition 83, the so-called Jessica’s Law, the length of civil commitment for SVPs is now “indeterminate.” That makes Coalinga State Hospital a strange kind of “Hotel California”–you can check out any time you like, but odds are you can never leave.

Click here to read the full article.
OpEd’s
“A Culture of Violence Against Women: More Than Rape Kits.”
Last week, RH Reality Check posted an interesting OpEd called, “A Culture of Violence Against Women: More Than Rape Kits.”
The New Republic: “Ladies’ Man”
Fred Strebeigh wrote a statement on Senator Joseph Biden and the history of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), earlier last week.
Strebeigh piece provides an interesting perspective on the VAWA and Senator Biden’s role in authoring the legislation.
VAWA is a federal act that provides funding to rape crisis centers throughout the country for prevention and response to sexual violence and “Biden has proclaimed it the ‘most important legislative accomplishment’ of his Senate career.”
The piece appeared in The New Republic: A Journal of Politics and the Arts.