Rape Evidence Collection Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Bill Requires Rape Kit Access Within 24 Hours

A bill passed in the Senate Monday morning, requiring all West Virginia hospitals with emergency departments have a trained Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) available to treat victims 24 hours a day.

Senate Bill 89 passed on third reading. It now goes to the House of Delegates for consideration. Issues around proper care for victims of sexual assault or abuse were also a topic of conversation during interim committee sessions where lawmakers heard from advocates, including two representatives of the Sexual Assault Forensic Examination Commission (SAFE).

On Jan. 10, two advocates for the bill, Nancy Hoffman, director of the West Virginia Foundation for Rape Information and Services (WVFRIS) and David Miller, Forensic Central Evidence Processing Supervisor with the West Virginia State Police, told lawmakers that remaining roadblocks in proper care and criminal proceedings stem from a shortage of SANE-trained nurses in combination with travel time and costs, causing long delays for the victims.

Senate Bill 89 addresses those issues by calling on the state’s hospitals to implement training as soon as possible, to meet their 18-month deadline.

Sen. Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell, mentioned the legislature has been working to pass a version of this bill for three years. He asked if West Virginia’s hospitals would have a hard time complying.

In response, Health and Human Resources Committee Chair Sen. Mike Maroney, R-Marshall, mentioned interim committee discussions and said the hospitals understood how important this training will be for their patients.

“We’ve had some pretty intense discussions during interims concerning this,” Maroney said. “The hospitals had a presence there like they usually do everywhere, paying attention. It’s a mandate of nurse training during probably the worst nursing shortage in our state’s history, the timing is not ideal but we have waited two years and they’ve known it’s coming and they are going to ramp up a little bit if you take the effective date, you have another 18 months, which gives you three cycles of training to get through. They know it is the right thing to do and they are okay.”

Furthermore, lawmakers discussed how impactful accessibility of SANE-trained nurses will be to the victims, but also the investigations.

“It would be possible right now to be a rape victim and have to travel, dirty, for three hours, that is adding significantly more trauma in my opinion to the victim that has already been traumatized,” Maroney said. “Every mile you drive, you increase the risk of contamination so therefore you risk non-conviction.”

Senate Bill 89 passed unanimously.

SAFE Commission Provides Updates On Rape Kit Backlog

During an Interim meeting of the Joint Committee on Health on Tuesday morning, lawmakers got an update on the state’s effort to End The Backlog of rape cases.

During an interim meeting of the Joint Committee on Health on Tuesday morning, lawmakers got an update on the state’s effort to End The Backlog of rape cases.

In 2020, the West Virginia Legislature passed a bill requiring the speedy testing and collection of rape kits after a 2015 initiative to start testing the state’s nearly 2,400 shelved rape kits.

Two representatives of the Sexual Assault Forensic Examination Commission (SAFE) updated lawmakers on various initiatives that could improve West Virginia’s method of collecting and prosecuting sex crime evidence.

Nancy Hoffman, director of the West Virginia Foundation for Rape Information and Services (WVFRIS) and Chairperson of the Sexual Assault Forensic Exam Commission provided updated statistics to the Joint Committee on Health.

“We saw in 2021, 540 kits were mailed out and 444 kits were returned, it’s never going to be at the same number because facilities have to keep some kits on hand for when a victim does come in,” Hoffman said. “But we went from 32 percent being collected to 82 percent being tested. So a huge difference in a pretty short period of time. I think it really shows that our partnership with the SAFE Commission and the legislature certainly is making a difference.”

Hoffman and fellow SAFE representative, David Miller, Forensic Central Evidence Processing Supervisor with the West Virginia State Police, told lawmakers that the remaining roadblocks in proper care and criminal proceedings stem from a shortage of trained Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) in combination with travel time and costs, causing long delays for the victims.

“In our state, there are only three facilities and they’re all in the northern part of the state that provide 24/7 adult and pediatric care provided by SANE-trained personnel,” Miller said. “This causes a person to have to travel potentially, if they’re sexually assaulted in one of those counties, where you can’t easily have access to a facility that will collect the kit. This is particularly a problem for pediatric patients, it is not unusual for me to see sexual assault kits where the incident occurred in the southern part of the state, Mingo and Raleigh counties in particular, I’ve seen travel all the way to Ruby Hospital to have a sex crime kit collected.”

In 1996, the West Virginia legislature created the The Forensic Medical Examination Fund to reimburse hospitals and medical facilities for the personnel and staff space to collect that evidence. Lawmakers set a flat rate of $350, and the rate has not increased in the 25 years since.

“The SAFE Commission looked at our surrounding states and learned that Pennsylvania reimbursement rate is $1,000 a kit, $1,300 in Virginia; Maryland has no cap and almost a couple thousand in Kentucky,” Miller said. “The Safety Commission recommendation therefore is to increase the reimbursement rate to medical facilities conducting exams to $1,000. And, to designate funds for examiner coordination, and training.”

Rape Evidence Collection Bill Passes W.Va. Senate

Legislation to regulate and improve the training of nurses who collect forensic evidence in sexual assault cases has passed in both the West Virginia…

Legislation to regulate and improve the training of nurses who collect forensic evidence in sexual assault cases has passed in both the West Virginia Senate and House.

The Senate passed the bill Thursday to create a Sexual Assault Forensic Examination Commission to regulate these specially-trained registered nurses at the county and state levels.

Sen. Corey Palumbo said the bill aims to address inadequacies in the collection of evidence in sexual assault cases. He said not every health facility currently has a trained sexual assault nurse, which can impede or prevent evidence collection.

The bill’s sponsor, Del. Barbara Fleischauer, has said the State Forensics Lab estimates up to 75 percent of rape kits have collection or documentation errors.

The bill will now go to the governor.