Lila Rose: When it comes to reports of sexual assault and sexual harassment, Planned Parenthood
has used the slogan that we should "Trust Women."
Cecile Richards: Well, I think the first lesson is to trust women.
And listen to women.
Lila Rose: So let's follow that advice and listen to the testimonies of these four women,
who are former Planned Parenthood workers and managers, who all say the same thing:
that Planned Parenthood routinely covers up child sexual abuse.
Catherine Adair: So many things would happen in that counseling room that really bothered me.
There'd be girls coming in with their abusers.
Against all protocol, the abuser would be let into the counseling room.
That was where they were supposed to sort of be separated from who they were with, and
men were never allowed back there, but on—with these young girls, they'd be allowed back there.
And even if they knew—even if I went to the manager and I said "Look, there's something
going on here."
She would say, "She's better off with the abortion.
We can't do anything about what's going on at home,
but at least we can give her the abortion."
Or we'd have women who don't speak English who'd come in.
I remember one woman in particular, she was from Somalia, she came in with her husband,
her brother-in-law, and one of their friends who spoke English, broken English, and she
sat there the entire time looking at the floor and the brother and the brother-in-law were
talking and—very sort of strongly and the gentleman that spoke English was like, "Just
give her the abortion.
Just give her the abortion.
That's what she wants.
It's what she wants."
And I went to my supervisor, I said, "I can't be sure that this is what this woman wants
because she can't speak for herself and she looks very nervous and she's looking at the
floor and she seems intimidated to me.
I think she's being forced into this."
And so my manager came in and said to the man that spoke English, "Could you have her
say that this is what she wants?"
So the man said to her in her language whatever he said and she nodded her head and she said,
"It's fine."
And off she went to have the abortion.
And I remember that specifically because I remember thinking,
"But this is supposed to be her choice.
How do we know this is her choice?
How do we know?
We don't know, and yet we're allowing this to happen to her."
Monica Cline: I was teaching on human trafficking and statutory rape, and was telling Planned
Parenthood staff of Corpus Christi and the Gulf Coast, basically, you’ve got to report
when you see a girl coming in with an older man who you can tell is not her father.
You know something’s wrong, you’ve got to report that; it’s considered human trafficking.
It is also considered statutory rape; you’ve got to report this.
And they started laughing.
And I said, ‘I don’t think there was anything I said that was funny.
What’s going on here?’
And the response was, ‘Honey, if she’s not having sex with this man this week she’ll
have another one next week.’
And so their view of our children is distorted.
It’s dehumanized.
I don’t know why their hearts are hardened, but they are.
And so when a girl or a young man goes there for an abortion, or condoms or testing, they
don’t see them with compassion anymore, if they ever did.
They see them as just, almost like an animal who can’t control themselves,
“They’re always gonna have sex, so we’re just going to give them enough lube and condoms
and hope they come in to get tested before they get some kind of cancer.”
They’re not gonna stop statutory rape.
One of the things that they even mentioned was, they adopted George Bush’s "don’t
ask, don’t tell [policy]" in the military for homosexuality, so they said, “Well if
it’s good enough for Bush, it’s good enough for us.
If we don’t ask how old her partner is, we don’t have to tell.”
And so Planned Parenthood actually allows victims of human trafficking to continue to
be victims of human trafficking.
And they’re okay with that.
I went back to my office and I told my supervisor, listen, I’m trying to teach them about key
concepts on title X; they’re admitting that they’re not gonna report cases of statutory rape.
The response from my supervisor was, “You’re job is to teach them the key concepts, and
that’s it.”
She was really upset with me that I challenged that.
Lila Rose: How did Planned Parenthood—your Planned Parenthood, the other ones you knew
about—treat cases of child sexual abuse?
Sue Thayer: We were all required to be mandatory reporters.
But if we saw a case of questionable abuse or even for sure—I mean, this—this kid
is being abused—we really were discouraged from calling it in, just because, they didn't
want to have the trouble.
The angry parent, the angry boyfriend, whatever it was.
So more than once, I was told, "No."
You know, "That is not reportable.
You don't need to call it in."
Lila Rose: So Planned Parenthood management was telling you—and you would even ask about
cases of suspected child sexual abuse—and they would tell you, "Don't call it in."
Sue Thayer: "Don't call it in."
Correct.
Lila Rose: Of young girls going in, suspected abuse.
Sue Thayer: Correct.
Mm-hm.
Correct.
Lila Rose: So after the investigations that were happening that Live Action was doing,
and exposing what was happening at Planned Parenthood with child sexual abuse cover-up—my
photo ends up in—in the facility—did Planned Parenthood address that with the staff at
all?
Do a re—change their policy to start reporting?
Sue Thayer: No.
No.
Quite the contrary.
I mean, I actually did call in a suspected case one time, and I got trouble for that.
"Should have called management first, you know, found out if that was reportable or not."
And I just called it in because I knew it needed to be reported.
And I was a mandatory reporter because of being a foster parent as well, so I felt like
I really needed to.
But that was—that was frowned upon.
Lila Rose: So you had a warning poster up of me, but there was no reporting—
Sue Thayer: Mm-mm.
Lila Rose: —and it was in fact discouraged to report child sexual abuse.
Sue Thayer: Mm-hm. Correct.
Lila Rose: Incredible.
Sue Thayer: Mm-hm.
Lila Rose: And heartbreaking for those victims.
Sue Thayer: Right. Yeah.
Lila Rose: Marianne, you said that while working at Planned Parenthood for almost two-and-a-half
years, there were some instances that you saw where you felt that there was a blatant
disregard for the rights of women.
Can you share some of those instances?
Marianne Anderson: There's one case that—it still haunts me to this day.
It was a young girl.
She was Asian, didn't speak any English, and came in with a man that was just clinging to her.
Had his arm around her the whole time.
Wanted to answer all the questions for her.
Fill out the paperwork for her.
He knew every—all of her particulars, even knew the dates of her last menstrual cycle.
He knew every particular about this girl.
When it came time to do the ultrasound, they were not allowed to take anybody back there
with them, and he was pretty upset about that.
"Well, I have to do the talking for her.
She doesn't know very much English."
They had a language line, it was available.
We had a phone that they could call and get interpreters, and they had this girl using
the language line to talk about it.
She told the lady that did the ultrasound that there was a lot of women that lived in
the house where she was, and they kind of lived out in the country, and she just felt
like she was alone out there, and she said, "We didn't even sometimes have clothes that
we needed to wear.
Sometimes we didn't have food."
I just have nightmares to this day thinking that this poor girl was probably living in
a home where she was kept under wraps.
Lila Rose: This girl was a younger woman you're sharing and—
Marriane Anderson: Yes.
Lila Rose: Once you had her talking on a language interpretation line, she shared she was living
in a home with a lot of other young— Marianne Anderson: —Lot of other women,
yes—
Lila Rose: —And that they didn't—sometimes have clothes or food—
Marianne Anderson: —And they could hardly even really communicate with each other.
It was just different backgrounds that lived in this house.
Lila Rose: —And the man that had walked in with this young woman who's trying to speak
for her, answer the questions for her, what did he say his relationship to her was?
Marianne Anderson: I don't know if he ever did—I think he said, "This is my girlfriend.
This is my girlfriend."
He also accused her—told her that she had to get an abortion because he says, "I'm not
sure if this baby's mine anyway."
Lila Rose: Wow Marianne Anderson: And she told us that he
was the only man that lived there.
Lila Rose: Was there alarm bells raised?
What did Planned Parenthood do?
Marianne Anderson: No.
Not really.
And I went as far as to write down her information and came so close to just trying to report
it myself, but I was told—I told my coworker I was thinking about doing this she says,
"I would not recommend that."
She says, "Unless you want a lot problems I would recommend you don't do that
Lila Rose: So when your coworker said, "Don't make the report, you know, because you'll ge
problems" was she talking about management? What was she talking about?
Marianne Anderson: I'm sure management. Yes. Yes, "They just—we don't need to get involved.
We don't need to get involved."
Lila Rose: Did management encourage reporting saying, "If you see a suspicious
situation where a woman looks like she's in trouble" like this sounds like this was, I mean—
Marianne Anderson: Not really, no they did not,
unless they were under the age of fourteen and it was required to be reported.
But other than that, no. They really didn't encourage that.
Lila Rose: And you're seeing this happening no reports, you know, this awful situation with
this young woman coming in, how did that make you feel?
Marianne Anderson: Degraded, like women don't really matter.
Men—
some men can be very controlling but I think Planned Parenthood
even added to that.