Denying rape victims counseling ' all about cutting costs'

How that despicable National Party prick Nick Smith manages to sleep at night is beyond me. He has lied through his teeth constantly over why counseling to rape victims was stopped, he pretended that it was a decision mandated by professionals when it turns out that the policy to deny rape victims counseling was based on research from professor Felicity Goodyear-Smith, a woman married to the son of Centrepoint community leader and convicted paedophile Bert Potter. Her work has been described as a rapists charter and an apologist position that denies any real harm from sexual abuse.

We now find out beyond fringe academics that pretend counseling and not the abuse is the damaging part, that the policy was all about cost cutting AND NOT best practice professional standards...

Sex-abuse cuts 'all about costs'
A former senior ACC manager says the corporation's cuts to sexual abuse counselling are "all about costs", contrary to ACC Minister Nick Smith's claims they were about ensuring best practice for clients.

David Rankin, now Child Youth and Family's senior medical adviser, has also revealed an advisory group of eight eminent psychiatrists cautioned ACC against introducing a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) diagnosis of mental injury as the threshold for victims of sex crimes to access support.

"They said, 'Be very careful, this is not what it's used for, this is not what it's all about'," Rankin told the Sunday Star-Times. "They said: 'It doesn't indicate severity, it only indicates the presence of a condition and it doesn't in any way tell you what treatment is needed."'

ACC controversially introduced the requirement last year, cutting access to treatment for hundreds, before partially restoring support last month. Two suicides have been linked to the cuts.

...Nick Smith must be counting his lucky stars that an Earthquake has the myopic view of the media so that there will be zero focus on his disgusting lies to deny rape victims counseling.