Alliance: Rape just first ordeal
Rape just first ordeal
April 14, 2007Cops, hospital often traumatize vics, sez report
BY CHRISTINA BOYLE, DAILY NEWS WRITER
Posted Saturday, April 14th 2007, 1:13 AM
Cheryl Wheeler criticizes police and hospital treatment after being raped.
It was the night after Valentine's Day and Cheryl Wheeler was fast asleep. She never heard the intruder sneak through her basement window, leaving dirty footprints on her washer-dryer. She didn't hear him creep through her home to her bedroom, and only woke with a start when she heard her name.
"I saw his shadow at the end of my bed; he said my name and I recognized his voice," Wheeler said of the night she was raped in 2005.
Miguel Ortiz eventually was arrested, convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for the crime. But as Wheeler ran to her neighbors' home for help that night, wearing nothing but an overcoat, her trauma as a rape victim was only just beginning.
"I was absolutely hysterical," she said. "I was screaming at them [the police] to go to my house because the rapist was still there. They said, 'Calm down, lady. We can't just go and pick up somebody for no reason.' Then they finally moseyed over."
Wheeler was taken by ambulance to St. Vincent's Hospital in Staten Island, where she was left in a room on her own, told there was no victims' advocate available to speak with her and was asked to recount the rape three times by two male detectives.
"I had no shoes, no socks, no purse, nothing," she said. "I had to track down a male orderly to ask for something to wear. My coat had been taken as evidence so I was totally naked."
After being tested for DNA, Wheeler, 40, a librarian at a Chelsea school, was released, but had to plead with hospital staff to call her a cab or somehow get her home.
"That does not sound right to me," hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Sammartino said last night. "We call people cabs all the time."
"I can't say that it didn't happen," she added. "But again, I wasn't there ... We can't even comment on a particular rape case."
A report released yesterday by the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault shows Wheeler's story is not unique. The first indepth analysis of the way rape victims are treated shows they are often traumatized further after their attack by inadequate treatment from police and hospital staff.
The survey interviewed 65 male and female rape victims and found only a third were asked whether they had a safe place to go after being raped; half were given information about an HIV vaccine, and 44% were given information about counseling.
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[1]: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/04/13/2007-04-13_rape_just_first_ordeal.html
[2]: http://www.nycagainstrape.org/home/nycaasa/stage.nycagainstrape.org/press_detail_5.html
[3]: http://www.nycagainstrape.org/home/nycaasa/stage.nycagainstrape.org/press_detail_2.html
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