Washington State Legislature has this whole chapter (Chapter 72.20) about Maple Lane School.  The law that brought me to research this Washington piece of legislature and the Maple Lane School for Girls, is section 72.20.065, which states:

“Any person who shall go upon the school grounds except on lawful business, or by consent of the superintendent, or who shall entice any girl away from the school, or who hall iln any way interfere with its management or discipline, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”

The Maple Lane School was, and is, a school that “committed” girls until they were eligible for parole for whatever put them there.  So, it isn’t your everyday boarding school.  It wasn’t a place for girls who “were not of sound mind,” or for girls who were sick in any way, but for girls who had disciplinary problems or who had committed some crime prior to the age of eighteen.  Today, it’s is a “medium/maximum security fenced facility that provides serious and middle offenders an academic program as well as on-campus work experience.”

The law regarding enticing girls away from the school was established in 1913, and then restated in 1959.  On the surface, one can assume that young troubled girls would be a target for nefarious-intentioned skeevy men who would set out to entice girls away from the school, so the law was in place to protect the girls.  Or, one could assume that many young girls have hormone-driven, impassioned boyfriends who would try to bust their girls out of juvie because the girls asked them to.

But what if, just what if, the law was originally put in place for other reasons.  A disturbing article on Washington State eugenics states that 685 sterilizations occurred in Washington state between the years of 1921 and 1944.  In 1909, a law was passed that said that rapists and “feebleminded, insane, epileptic, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sexual perverts” were allowed to be sterilized.

By 1921, “reform school girls, welfare moms, the retarded, gays, and the physically disabled” were sterilized under the 1909 law.  This source lists Maple Lane High School as a “feeder institution” to the sterilization project.  What if the families and loved ones of the Maple Lane girls were just trying to save their troubled teens from an irreversible sterilization?

In other words, what if the law was put in place to keep the girls captive to perform this egregious practice on them?  You see folks, there are often two possible sides to every law.

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Did you know that in Washington state it’s illegal to walk around in public if you are sick? More specifically, “Every person who shall wilfully expose himself to another, or any animal affected with any contagious or infectious disease, in any public place or thoroughfare, except upon his or its necessary removal in a manner not dangerous to the public health; and every person so affected who shall expose any other person thereto without his knowledge, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”

If you noticed at the end, it specifies that exposing someone without prior knowledge of your disease is illegal. So does that mean if you give them fair warning ahead of time, you’re safe? I smell a loophole! Joking aside, this means you can’t go out even if you have the common cold for which there is no cure. It’s not as if you would want to leave your bed anyway, but still, it’s a little harsh.

Here’s a little dilemma with this law: What if you have to go to court a day that you’re sick? Now if that’s not “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” then I don’t know what is. Seems to me you’re getting in trouble either way. The moral of the story: if you’re prone to illness, don’t move to Washington.

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