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Nurses Get Special Training to Deal With Victims of Sex Crimes

Posted on: Tuesday, 8 November 2005, 00:00 CST

By Paul L. Mikolajczyk, The News Herald, Panama City, Fla.

Nov. 6--PANAMA CITY BEACH -- Terry Thomas remembers a time when police took rape victims straight to the morgue.

During the early part of his 30-year career in law enforcement, Thomas investigated sex crimes in Pinellas County. He said protocol there was to take victims of rape to a forensic pathologist for examination and collection of evidence.

The only person with training in forensic evidence collection back then, Thomas said, was the county's medical examiner.

"We used to take them down to the medical examiner's office, these women who had just been violated, and take them before the M.E., who sometimes was still wearing an apron bloody from the autopsy he was working on," said Thomas, who now is a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

"We'd take the victim into a room with a steel table, only a few feet from the cooler," he said. "It was a traumatic situation for an already traumatized victim."

Thomas recalled his early investigating experiences on Wednesday for a room of the newest breed of Florida nurses -- sexual assault nurse examiners, or SANEs.

The nurses attended Thomas' class and more than a dozen others at the Majestic Resort in Panama City Beach last week as part of their certification process to be SANE forensic nurses.

The Panhandle Sexual Assault Response Team, or SART, program and the Central Florida Chapter of the International Association of Forensic Nursing sponsored the weeklong training session.

Once certified, the nurses will be trained to collect forensic evidence in a way that is sensitive to the fragile emotional state of the victims of rape and other sex crimes, a far cry from the days of examinations by people more accustom to examining dead victims.

Thomas, who helped investigate Ted Bundy's serial rapes and murders, said the need to help a victim recover from an attack is just as important as solving the crime and catching the perpetrator. The movement from medical examiners and doctors lacking forensic training to SANE nurses is the way to obtain that balance, he said.

"Having you (the nurses) helping these victims helps us investigate the crime and helps the victim recover from that trauma," Thomas told the nurses.

Robin Baxley, nursing director of the Panhandle SART program and Bay Medical Center's emergency room nursing supervisor, helped organize the training sessions and currently is the only certified SANE nurse working at the hospital.

Baxley explained that SANE nurses are standard registered nurses who can be called away from regular duties when a rape victim arrives at a hospital or clinic.

"In the past, some victims might have to wait several hours sitting in an emergency room before they even see a doctor," Baxley said.

"These are people who are told not to shower, not to go to the bathroom, not to change clothes and to wait," she said. "They are suffering, and SANE nurses get the examination and collection of evidence going so that they can start recovering."

SANE nurses are trained to properly collect evidence during the examination -- such as fluids and hairs -- and take photographs that can be used to catch and prosecute the assailant, something a nurse or doctor without forensic training is not used to doing, Baxley said.

Most importantly, the SANE nurses are there to provide emotional support through the process, she said.

"What you've got to remember is what sexual assault does is it takes control away from the victim," she said. "The first thing we do is give control back to the victim."

Paul Vecker, an investigator and victim advocate with the Bay County Sheriff's Office, called SANE nurses a "tremendous asset" to police when investigating sex crimes.

"There is a definite advantage to having them in there with the victim, comforting the victim and collecting evidence," Vecker said.

Assistant State Attorney Joe Grammer added that because of their extensive training, SANE nurses also make for more credible witnesses should a criminal case go to trial.

"By providing a SANE nurse at trial who has followed through from examination to the courtroom we expect to have better and more consistent evidence to present to a jury," Grammer said. "There are no negatives to having SANE nurses."

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Source: The News Herald

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