I recently had a friend raped and go through the
rape kit process. Today they got the bill. A $5000 bill. Ridiculous. My case
happens to be in Texas, but this is not only a state problem.
“A rape kit is a set of items that specially trained medial staff use to gather and preserve evidence of a sexual assault. A woman can decline the process, which can take up to four hours, but going to an emergency room and undergoing this additional intrusion helps document the attack and gives law enforcement evidence it needs to investigate the crime and prosecute the rapist.”
A disabled woman in North Dakota who
was brutally raped by an acquaintance. While this woman was recovering from
surgery required to repair her internal organs after the rape she received a
bill from her hospital for the cost of her rape kit. She was eventually able to
get her state's victim compensation board to pay the hospital, but in the
meantime she kept receiving notices from the hospital's bill collector.
"I could not
believe this was happening to me, after all this," she told me. "It
got resolved, thank God, but not before I started to worry that my inability to
come up with the money to pay the hospital would jeopardize my case. They tell
me it wouldn't have, but it was so much worry that I didn't need."
This is just one
example of what victim’s go through. No crime victim should be asked to pay to
collect evidence and it is even more horrifying that this would be asked of
survivors of a heinous crime like sexual violence who have already demonstrated
enormous courage and commitment to justice in submitting to the examination. A
victim agrees to the collection of a rape kit in the hope that DNA testing will
help police apprehend her (and sometimes his) assailant. Charging the victim to
collect the evidence is so foreign to our sense of justice and basic compassion
that it is comforting to believe is limited to these few places.
No one explains this problem better
then Sarah Tofte, US Program researcher:
"The federal Violence Against Women
Act prohibits states from charging victims for rape kit collection, or risk
losing federal funding, and every state has passed a law to implement this
requirement. This is a significant and necessary reform, but its effect is
limited by weak state laws and the way hospitals, the police, prosecutors, and
victim compensation funds interpret and carry out their obligation to assume the
cost of rape kit collection."
Some state laws
are simply inadequate. For example, Oklahoma's law caps compensation for rape
victims at $450. This covers barely one-third of the estimated cost of
collecting a rape kit in that state. Maine's law caps compensation at $500.The
laws in North Dakota, Oregon, and the District of Columbia allow the victim to
seek compensation for any cost she incurs for the collection of her rape kit.
This means that the victim may first have to pay the bill herself, and then apply
for compensation. In Montana, the victim is supposed to be compensated as long
as the victim compensation fund does not run out and as long as she cooperates
with the investigation.
Other states,
like Texas, have laws that appear adequate but can be poorly executed. Texas's
statute seems clear: law enforcement must pay the cost of a rape kit. In
practice, the payment process is far from simple. In February 2009, I spoke
with a rape victim in Texas who received a notice from the hospital that the
police had paid $700 toward the cost of the exam, leaving her responsible for
the remaining $800. She didn't know about the victim compensation fund, and
made two payments of $50 each before a victim's advocate helped her to apply to
the fund, which eventually paid the remainder.
The woman told
Human Rights Watch: "I don't understand why they had to involve me at all.
Why couldn't [the victim compensation fund] and the police and the hospital
have worked it out on their own? The payment of my rape kit seemed like a big
hassle."
If rape kits are
to be treated like fingerprints collected at a robbery - in fact like every
other kind of forensic evidence - then states should assume the full cost, in
every case, regardless of the circumstances. States also need to prohibit the
parties responsible for payment, such as hospitals, from billing the rape
victim or pressing her to pay the bill and seek compensation later.
Women should never have to file an
insurance claim in connection with a rape kit. A rape kit isn't treatment. It
is part of a criminal investigation, and neither they nor their insurance
carrier should in any way be forced to bear even temporary cost of this procedure.
For more information see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-cutbirth/how-can-texas-force-women_b_201289.html
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