Alliance: Newsletter: Summer 2005: FHP Report
Newsletter: Summer 2005: FHP Report
SAFE In the City Forum
Since its inception nearly 10 years ago, the Forensic Healthcare Program (originally the Rape Crisis Consortium) has worked to create best practice standards for care of sexual assault victims, and to tailor these practice standards to fit the realities of New York City. A growing handful of our hospitals provide Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner (SAFE) services, scattered throughout the five boroughs in no systematic fashion. To date, there has been no initiative to ensure that every victim receives this care, despite overall acceptance that SAFE services are beneficial for victims, and help busy city emergency departments to provide quality care.The current reality is that we can and should move forward to ensure that SAFE services are made available to all sexual assault victims in the city, not just those survivors lucky enough to get themselves to the right emergency rooms. To this end, the Alliance invited stakeholders from every borough to participate in a forum on the logistics of a creating a citywide system of SAFE programs.
The participants agreed that it was an important goal to increase access to the best practice model and indicated a willingness to participate in workgroups to follow-up. We look forward to working with everyone on this important initiative.
CJCP Conference
The goal of the Criminal Justice Collaboration Project (CJCP) is to create a forum where criminal justice, law enforcement, emergency service, medical professionals and rape crisis counselors can come together to discuss common issues and concerns, identify areas of existing need, and problem solve. The CJCP Committee meets bimonthly, and each year its work culminates in an annual conference.This year’s conference focused on the collaborative nature of caring for sexual assault victims, and on the diversity of sexual assault cases pursued by NYC District Attorneys in the past year. The conference featured an eloquent and moving keynote address delivered by a young woman from the Mount Sinai SAVI Survivor Speakers group. She spoke of her own interaction with the many city systems involved in caring for sexual assault victims.
Following this keynote presentation, Larry Busching, Chief of the Family Court Division of the New York City Law Department, moderated four panel presentations. Each panel presented a single sexual assault case, and the panels themselves consisted of the “team” of professionals that worked on that case – for instance, the prosecutor, the detectives, the medical examiner, the SAFE, the rape advocate. A team from the Bronx and Queens presented a serial rape case, the Staten Island team presented an acquaintance rape case involving a teenager, the Brooklyn team presented a stranger rape case, and the Manhattan team presented a date rape case. The conference successfully demonstrated the necessity of collaboration between disciplines.
Other Activities
In March, the Tamara Pollak, the Alliance’s Forensic Healthcare Program (FHP) Director, made a presentation to lawyers and counseling staff of Sanctuary for Families along with Carla Brekke, Director of Rape Crisis Services at Bellevue Medical Center. Sanctuary for Families is a leading provider of integrated services to domestic violence survivors and a recognized authority on the dynamics of domestic violence in the NYC area, helping women and children rebuild their lives. Sanctuary approached the Alliance to speak on several issues. They share our concern about the prevalence of sexual violence amongst victims of domestic violence, and the importance of identifying this population for treatment. Issues included in the presentation were how legal counsel and program advocates can refer clients with sexual violence histories to appropriate acute and non-acute medical and rape crisis care, and what family court lawyers should know about the medical, forensic and legal aspects of Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner (SAFE) programs.This training came on the heels of the ninth annual Lawyers Committee Against Domestic Violence (LCADV) Conference entitled, “Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault: Integrating Insights and Practice.” The Alliance was recruited by the LCADV to be a part of the planning committee in order to create a bridge between domestic and sexual violence programs. We salute the LCADV and their pioneering efforts to work with rape crisis programs and look forward to many more positive collaborations.
At the end of the funding year, the FHP is happy to announce that we trained 90 sexual assault examiners to provide emergent medical care, and collect forensic evidence, for victims in crisis in hospitals across the city. The Alliance is the first and now one of only two NY State Department of Health certified sexual assault examiner training programs in the state.
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[1]: http://www.nycagainstrape.org/home/nycaasa/stage.nycagainstrape.org/newsletter_column_5.html
[2]: http://www.nycagainstrape.org/home/nycaasa/stage.nycagainstrape.org/newsletter_article_204.html
[3]: http://www.nycagainstrape.org/home/nycaasa/stage.nycagainstrape.org/newsletter_article_206.html
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