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Today, two nurses from the Providence St. Joseph Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners Team tell about the free service they provide to the community, assisting victims of rape or other forms of sexual assault. It’s a fairly powerful conversation and you might want to avoid it if those topics disturb you. But these women are amazing professionals.

If you’ve been sexually assaulted, call law enforcement and/or the North Coast Rape Crisis Team. The Rape Crisis hotlines are open 24/7. Here are the numbers to call:

• In Humboldt: (707) 445-2881
• In Del Norte: (707) 465-2851

Above: The Outpost’s John Kennedy O’Connor speaks with nurses Jennifer Hovie and Kristen Hansen of the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners team. A transcript can be found below.

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JOHN KENNEDY O’CONNOR:

Well, welcome to another Humboldt Conversation. I’m here today in Providence St. Joseph Hospital with Jennifer and Kristen, who are practice nurses. Thank you so much for joining us today. And here at the hospital, there is an incredible group of practice nurses, of which these two ladies are part of the team, who make up the SANE team, and that’s the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners. And you work, actually, in the wider community as well with the SART team. But tell us a little bit about the role that you have within this particular practice group.

JENNIFER HOVIE:

So our role is to provide medical care to people that have been sexually assaulted. So what we’re doing is just providing trauma-informed care to people that have experienced a sexual assault, and then as part of that medical care we’re also collecting evidence that we then pass on to law enforcement so that it can be analyzed for DNA.

O’CONNOR:

And you do in fact work very closely with law enforcement because this is part of the wider Humboldt SART effort, but this is something very much hospital-specific, isn’t it, that within here we are within your particular practice group.

KRISTEN HANSEN:

So we coordinate with law enforcement and North Coast Rape Crisis to perform evidentiary exams for victims of sexual assault in Humboldt and Del Norte counties and occasionally outside of that scope too. And we are the only group locally that does this. And so victims are not required to interact with law enforcement. When they are interacting with law enforcement, law enforcement will contact the team and schedule an exam for evidence collection. And for people who don’t feel safe reporting to law enforcement or interacting with law enforcement, Rape Crisis will coordinate with us to do an exam to collect evidence in the event that the survivor later feels comfortable pursuing the case.

O’CONNOR:

I suppose in my head I always think of sexual assault against women, but of course you do actually have experienced sexual assault against men as well, don’t you, in your line of work?

HOVIE:

So our team and our services encompass everything from birth to death. And so we have children that come in for exams, we have adolescents, adults, we have elderly people that have been assaulted — anyone who needs the services. 

HANSEN:

Regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

O’CONNOR:

When we arrived at the hospital today, you took us on a little bit of a tour, but there’s a very good reason for that, isn’t there? Privacy is obviously very important for anybody who is coming to the hospital in these circumstances.

HOVIE:

Absolutely. So one of the things that we emphasize to the survivors that come forward is that this encounter is very private, that we do take photos during our exam. These photos aren’t available to every medical provider, that they are closely guarded and they actually just go to law enforcement. That the details of their exam are not available to every person who ever accesses their chart. That it’s it’s a very private thing that we’re doing and we guard it closely.

HANSEN:

Even though it’s at the hospital, it’s not part of their medical record. None of this information is shared with anybody here. If they go to their doctor next week, their doctor wouldn’t know that they were here, couldn’t access any of that. And the other thing that we like to really emphasize with this is that this is all about choice and respecting survivors needs and their need to report. So of course, we wanna help people and empower them. But everything they do here is with respect to their choice, what they wanna do. If they can refuse any part of the exam, they can stop the exam at any time. They’re not forced to interact with us. They’re not forced to do anything that they’re not comfortable with. They’ve already had their choices taken from them. So it’s very important to us as nurses to respect that and support them in any way that we can — through privacy, through making sure nobody has to know, no one has to be involved. And they don’t have to tell us or participate in any part of the exam that they’re not comfortable with.

O’CONNOR:

And that, I think, as you were saying earlier, is one of the reasons why this particular space is very private, etc., because obviously if it took place in say the A&E area you run the risk of people being recognized.

HOVIE:

Absolutely. And then we’re doing an interview — they’re telling us what happened — and so we don’t want them to be overheard, either.

O’CONNOR:

You did say earlier that sometimes children are accompanying the victim, but you do make sure there is a policy for that as well.

HOVIE:

Right, and if the victim is a child, or the survivor is a child, then we make sure that we’ve separated the parent and the child for the interview portion, because there is a concern that if the child hears the parent’s concerns over and over, that they will incorporate that into their own memories, essentially, and kind of believe that that was true and correct, and it just kind of influences them. So we try and make sure that we’re separating them for that interview portion.

O’CONNOR:

Now, you were saying earlier that this is … obviously, you’re taking evidence, you’re gathering evidence, but you’re also providing medical care and medical support for somebody who may be seriously injured through an assault.

HOVIE:

So if we have someone who does require medical care, then obviously that takes precedence over evidence collection. So a lot of what we’re doing is just ensuring that if someone … and sometimes because of a trauma response, people’s recollection of what happened exactly and what events took place is a little spotty and it comes back in little bits and pieces. And so sometimes during my interview, I’ll find out that they were indeed strangled and that they had X, Y, and Z symptoms. And so that will just alert me that they need to be screened by a medical provider and we’ll take care of that. Sometimes we find injuries that would actually require, like, sutures or if there’s a foreign object that has been left behind and needs removal from someone other than me, then I would definitely enlist a higher level of medical care for those concerns.

O’CONNOR:

One thing I think to stress is you are not, although you obviously work hand in hand with law enforcement, you’re not law enforcement, you really are looking at the patient and the patient care and whatever happens in the next stage is really the next stage.

HANSEN:

Part of the clarification of our role is we are not … Sometimes people come and they want to know did something happen to me or did something happen to my child. And that’s not our determination or that’s not what we’re here for. We’re not here to do, like, a well child check and let you know if something happened. In most cases there is no physical evidence of sexual assault. Particularly in children. It’s very hard to do a physical exam and definitively prove sexual abuse or sexual assault. and particularly.

In adults, we can report our findings, but we can’t tell you yes, you someone was raped or yes, someone was sexually assaulted, except an extremely limited child cases. So we perform an exam, we look for medical conditions that need to be treated, we collect DNA evidence, but we we don’t make a determination. We can’t tell you, “Yes, something definitely happened.” If someone has had a complete blackout of events and they don’t remember anything or perhaps they’re too traumatized remember exactly what happened. We collect evidence. We take pictures of injuries we report that to law enforcement. And then what happens from there is up to the law enforcement investigation and so on and so forth.

O’CONNOR:

And you are a team of five, I believe, practice nurses, and this is a service that’s 24-7. People can just walk in, they don’t need to make any sort of appointment or anything.

HOVIE:

Well, saying that they can just walk in as a little … they do need to contact us ahead of time via law enforcement or through North Coast Rape Crisis. And if they’re not interested in participating with either of those entities, then we can certainly still do an exam for them.

HANSEN:

So our team is comprised of five nurses. We all have full-time jobs that we do as well. So we cover 24 seven call, but in that time we also have to work. Jen works three 12-hour shifts. I work five eight-hour shifts. So we do have to schedule, pre-schedule exams around our regular. And luckily we don’t do enough exams to need people here 24 hours a day, but that does mean that they have to be scheduled.

And because there’s only five of us, we keep our personal contact information private. There’s a single line that people call to schedule an exam and only Rape Crisis and law enforcement have that contact information. And they should be the only people really contacting us.

O’CONNOR:

That is the first protocol always, law enforcement or the Rape Crisis line.

HOVIE:

If someone presents to the emergency department reporting a sexual assault and says that they’d like an exam but that they don’t want to participate with law enforcement or rape crisis, and we can certainly accommodate that as well. We really do encourage them to participate with rape crisis because the level of support, emotional support and follow up with legal if that’s what they’re doing, counseling…

I mean, Rape Crisis, is an invaluable resource within our community and just having the exam done is probably not going to actually encompass or satisfy all of the needs of a survivor. I mean there’s a huge emotional component that isn’t going to be addressed entirely by doing this exam.

O’CONNOR:

Well Jennifer, Kristen, this has been very interesting. It’s very traumatic to listen to but certainly I think this is an incredible service and I think people really do need to know that this is available at the hospital. So thank you very much indeed for joining us today. Very much appreciate it.

Thank you for joining us for another Humboldt Conversation and join us for another one very soon.