In The News

From: State House News Service <news@statehousenews.com>
Date: Thursday, 01 Apr 2004 16:43:52 -0500

ASSAULT VICTIMS PUSH NURSE EXAMINER PROGRAM THAT HELPS TRACK RAPISTS

By Michael P. Norton
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, APRIL 1, 2004……Victims of sexual assault on Thursday
urged lawmakers to make permanent a program under which prosecutors of
rapists have posted a 98 percent conviction rate.

According to victim advocates, sexual assault nurse examiners have played a key role in both guiding victims through the trauma of post-rape exams and subsequently helping prosecutors track down rapists. This is how it works. Specially trained nurse examiners, after being notified by beepers, immediately respond to victims at designated hospitals. They document assault details, perform medical exams and testing, and collect time-sensitive evidence. Since 1998, state public health officials say, nurse examiners have testified in 45 sexual assault trials, 98 percent of which ended in convictions.

And while Massachusetts hospitals host 22 of the nation’s more than 2,000 so-called SANE sites, victim advocates say many rape victims are still likely to encounter untrained medical staff upon arriving at a hospital after being raped or assaulted. They urged lawmakers to encourage more
professional training.

Debbie Smith, a Virginia woman who was raped in the woods behind her home in March 1989, lent her voice to the launch of Sexual Assault Awareness Month today. She said her assailant was hunted down in 1995 only with the assistance of DNA evidence. And she urged elected officials to make sexual assault nurse practitioners a fixture across the state’s health care
network, to supplement hospital staff. Smith has become a leader in the national effort to help pay for police testing of thousands of DNA samples sitting in so-called rape kits in evidence rooms, and to compare those DNA profiles to known offenders nationwide. She said she nearly broke down when the recently visited the evidence storage room of the Virginia crime lab and saw the large number of unprocessed rape kits.

“It broke my heart,” she said. “I looked at all of those kits on the shelves and I thought, ‘These aren’t just boxes, these are people’s lives.” She added the average rapist will rape 8 to 12 times before he is caught.

House Health Care Committee Co-chairman Rep. Peter Koutoujian (D-Waltham) praised Smith and her husband Rob for their advocacy on behalf of victims. “You guys don’t just talk the talk, you walk the walk,” said Koutoujian.

“This is an incredible program,” said Koutoujian. “It touches so many lives.” Koutoujian said sexual assault is “something that is prevalent throughout our society right now. It’s a tremendous problem.”

Koutoujian and Sen. Cynthia Creem (D-Newton) are sponsoring H 3520, which codifies the SANE program. The Health Care Committee endorsed the bill in June. It is now before House Ways and Means.

ASSAULT VICTIMS PUSH NURSE EXAMINER PROGRAM THAT HELPS TRACK RAPISTS

State funding for SANE rape kits has remained steady at nearly $56,000 a year since 2002, while funding for sexual assault nurse examiners has been cut by more than 12 percent, from $837,540 to $733,409. The program served more than 2,400 victims at 22 designated SANE hospital sites in fiscal year 2003.

With the House budget unveiling two weeks away, sexual assault victim advocates are asking for no further cuts to the SANE program and increased funding for rape crisis centers, which have only partially recovered from a 70 percent budget cut last summer. The Department of Public Health runs the SANE program, with help from an advisory board that includes medical
providers and law enforcement officials.

Senate Majority Whip Joan Menard (D-Somerset) urged victims and their advocates to tell their stories and make their public policy demands known on Beacon Hill, where lawmakers are reviewing Gov. Mitt Romney’s $23.1billion budget proposal and facing runaway health care and pension costs. “You’re in competition,” Menard said. “The dollars are few and the causes
are many.”

Donald Hayes, director of the Boston Police Department crime lab, said SANE provides quality forensic evidence. The field is an exciting and fast-moving one, Hayes said, because forensic evidence is playing such a critical role in tracking down violent offenders and exonerating the
wrongly accused.

Hayes said evidence collected by sexual assault nurse examiners played a key role in helping police track down the perpetrator of four rapes in Boston in December 2001. The guilty party will be sentenced today.

Victim advocates on Thursday also praised other efforts in the works, including statewide implementation at the Massachusetts State Police Crime lab of new date rape drug testing guidelines for sexual assault victims. Supporters of the effort say it can lead victims to bring charges against alleged assailants.

The SANE program is also working with public safety officials, clinical experts and child advocacy centers to establish guidelines for the delivery of care and evidence collection in cases involving sexual abuse and assault of children under the age of 12.