Rep. Morgan Griffith introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday that would provide sexual assault victims improved access to specially trained medical workers known as sexual assault forensic nurses.
Griffith, R-Salem, co-sponsored a similar bipartisan bill last year in Congress that would publicize information on the availability of sexual assault forensic examiners at hospitals and create a system for getting sexual assault victims to nearby hospitals with these examiners. His new bill follows a report published last month showing a shortage in Virginia of qualified nurses and hospitals that provide sexual assault examinations.
“We have to do better for sexual assault victims,” Griffith, who was a criminal defense attorney before he joined Congress, said in a statement. “By improving the ability to respond to these heinous crimes, we can better support those who suffer from sexual assault.”
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Stephen Weiss, senior health policy analyst with the Virginia Joint Commission on Health Care, told legislators last month that sexual assault victims were sometimes traveling for hours to multiple hospitals before locating a sexual assault forensic nurse. He said law enforcement brought victims to hospitals, only to be turned away because such nurses were not on staff.
Sexual assault forensic nurses are specially trained and certified to care for sexual assault victims and collect forensic evidence.
Of Virginia’s 122 licensed hospitals, only 16 employ these nurses, Weiss wrote in his report. Roanoke and the New River Valley each have a hospital providing sexual assault forensic nurses, but there are none south of the New River Valley.
When new programs opened and existing programs improved staffing, the number of exams increased, Weiss observed.
“There’s a need for these examinations and the facilities to do them,” he told the Virginia General Assembly Joint Commission on Health Care.
Griffith’s bill, the Sexual Assault Victims Protection Act of 2019, would establish a task force to identify barriers to training and retaining sexual assault forensic nurses, as well as improving access to them.
The stalled legislation has undergone some changes over the years. Former Texas Republican Rep. Ted Poe first introduced a version in 2017 named after Megan Rondini, a University of Alabama student. She sought help from law enforcement and a hospital after reporting a sexual assault in 2015, but the hospital didn’t have a sexual assault forensic nurse.
Rondini killed herself a year later.
Poe retired from Congress this year, so Griffith is continuing to carry on the legislation.
There were 5,726 sexual assaults reported in Virginia in 2017, although sexual assaults often go unreported.
Weiss said there ’s a tendency to treat sexual assault examinations as a criminal justice issue rather than health care issue. But he said about 40% of sexual assault examinations are done anonymously, so there are no police reports, and assaults don’t end up in the court system.
“And yet, they need their mental health care, they need their sexual health and they need their physical health care taken care of,” Weiss said.
Weiss made various recommendations for the General Assembly to consider next year, including standardized training. He also suggested allowing sexual assault victims to obtain expanded access to the state crime victim compensation fund. Now, the fund only will cover the sexual assault examination — but not other medical expenses — but only if the person reports the assault to police and cooperates with an investigation.