Planned Parenthood to Retrain Staff After Sex Trafficking Scandal

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Feb 8, 2011   |   11:48AM   |   Washington, DC

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nation’s biggest abortion business, has been forced to announce it will retrain its workers following a scandal that staff at saw six of its centers helping alleged sex traffickers.

Videos from undercover investigations at six Planned Parenthood facilities in three states, so far, have shown Planned Parenthood employees helping sex traffickers obtain abortions for the underage girls they exploit, getting them STD testing, and guiding them in covering up their activities.

Officials at the abortion centers should have shown great concern about the potentially illegal activities and immediately reported them to authorities. Because that was not done, Planned Parenthood said Monday it would retrain thousands of staff people across the country in the proper procedures for dealing with sex traffickers in the future. The abortion business also said it would fire any staffers violating those procedures.

Stuart Schear, vice president for communications of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told the New York Times the training would include special classes designed to educate staffers with state and local laws in the jurisdiction of the abortion business. The classes would be for any staff who interface with the public and would not involve policy changes but enforcement of what local laws require.

“We’re doing this to reassure the public that we take these reporting requirements seriously,” Mr. Schear told the Times, saying the retraining should be completed in April. After that, “termination of employment is the only possible action,” he said, for those who violate the procedures. “We are not asking the front-line health worker or receptionist to do a legal analysis of the situation, but rather to report it when there is any hint of a risk to the welfare of a minor.”

Lila Rose, president of Live Action, the group that conducted the sting operation and released the videos, told the Times the move by the national Planned Parenthood organization amounted to nothing more than “window dressing.”

“Live Action’s investigation has uncovered a serious, institutional crisis in which Planned Parenthood is willing to aid and abet sex trafficking and exploitation of minors and young women,” she said.

David Schmidt, also of Live Action, responded to the retraining news this way: “So Planned Parenthood made no admission of guilt yet they are launching this major training effort. It sounds like a PR move instead of actually taking the problem seriously. It begs the question.”

“If Planned Parenthood believed that their staff was acting professionally in the videos we recorded then why do a retraining? Planned Parenthood is trying to have it both ways. If they believe that they have a problem that requires retraining then they should be forthcoming about what they believe the nature of the problem is,” he said.

Schmidt added: “And let’s not forget that just days ago, Planned Parenthood’s Vice President Stuart Schear said that, “There is no training that could prevent this from happening. This was a complete breakdown in judgment. We don’t understand what happened with this employee.’”

The announcement of the retraining comes one day before a new video Live Action released today showing another Planned Parenthood center helping sex traffickers.

While staff at the Planned Parenthood centers in other states offered to arrange abortions or STD testing for the sex traffickers and guided them in how to keep the actions from authorities, staff in New York tell the Undercover “pimp” he can pose as a guardian to get discounts for his underage sex workers. The abortion center staff assure him they will  see underage girls as young as 13 who have been victimized by the sex traffickers.

As is the case in the previous videos, the sex ring operator asks specifically about services that include testing for STDs and abortion for underage girls who don’t speak English and who are engaged in “sex work.” Throughout the footage, Planned Parenthood staff insist that the services and discussions are confidential and private — even though such acts should be reported to authorities if the sex traffickers had not been engaged in a sting operation.

When told the girls involved in the sex trade are as young as 13, the Planned Parenthood Supervisor/Practitioner at the Bronx, New York Planned Parenthood tells the man, “We see people as young as 13. Everything is totally confidential.”

The staffer offers guidance on how the pimp’s underage girls can get insurance through tax payer funded programs to pay for abortions and other services even if the underage girls are not U.S. citizens.

This is the sixth set of full footage released from Live Action’s current ongoing investigation into Planned Parenthood. That latest footage reveals what its president, Lila Rose, calls an “institutional crisis in which Planned Parenthood is willing to assist sex trafficking and exploitation of minors and young women.”

The sting operations revealed Planned Parenthood center staffers were willing to provide assistance to alleged operators of a sex trafficking ring — ranging from helping them arrange abortions for the underage girls they said they were victimizing to showing them how to avoid scrutiny and skirt parental involvement laws. The videos covered Planned Parenthood centers in Richmond and also other centers in Roanoke, Charlottesville, and Falls Church.

Live Action also filmed Planned Parenthood staff helping sex traffickers in New Jersey — and the nurse who aided the alleged traffickers there has already been fired while the state health department is looking into the problems further.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has already received the full, unedited footage of the Planned Parenthood expose’ videos and he told CBS 6 WVTR in Richmond that they are “shocking.”

Live Action has previously released more than a dozen hidden camera videos from ten states. This body of visual evidence shows several alarming patterns of illegal Planned Parenthood activities including cover-up of sexual abuse of minors, the skirting of parental consent laws, citing unscientific and fabricated medical information to manipulate women to have abortions, and Planned Parenthood’s willingness to accept donations earmarked to abort African-American babies.