SD18 - Response to and Prevention of Sexual Assault in the Commonwealth of Virginia


Executive Summary:
Introduction

In 2004, the General Assembly passed Senate Joint Resolution 131, requesting the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) to study the statewide response to sexual assault victims and the prevention of sexual assault. SJR 131 directs VDH to examine the responses and prevention programs and activities of law enforcement, sexual assault crisis centers and other advocacy and support services, medical personnel, and the judicial system and design a plan to provide the General Assembly with recommendations for improvement. Specifically, VDH was to:

• Review law enforcement and criminal justice statistics and interactions with victims, identify inconsistencies and determine causes;

• Determine treatment and services provided to victims by medical personnel throughout the Commonwealth;

• Examine sexual assault crisis center delivery in each locality to determine availability, accessibility and comprehensiveness;

• Determine prevention efforts in communities and across the Commonwealth and how such efforts can be enhanced; and

• Survey collaborative efforts between all agencies and organizations that work with victims of sexual assault.

Study Methods

VDH coordinated the study in collaboration with the Virginia Domestic and Sexual Assault Action Alliance and the Department of Criminal Justice Services. In addition, a team of researchers at Old Dominion University were very instrumental in completing several aspects of the study including a review of data on the prevalence of sexual assault and characteristics of victims and perpetrators; a review of the criminal justice and law enforcement data; a review of state-level plans that address sexual assault; an analysis of data collected by sexual assault crisis centers; surveys of emergency departments and primary care medical practices; a survey of sexual assault crisis center directors and workers; in-depth interviews with sexual assault crisis center workers; and focus group interviews with various professionals involved in the response to sexual assault, including workers from local sexual assault crisis centers, campus officials involved in campus response to sexual assault, and officials working at the state level in agencies that respond to sexual assault.

Sexual Assault in Virginia

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 2004 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), in 2002 and 2003, there was an average of over 223,000 incidents of rape or sexual assault per year in the United States, which is a victimization rate of .9/1,000 population. A recent survey by VDH (Masho & Odor, 2003), the only statewide study of sexual assault in Virginia, indicated that one in four women and one in eight men in Virginia have been victims of sexual assault. Eighty-seven percent of female victims and 96% of male victims were under the age of 18 when they were assaulted. Furthermore, 20% of female victims and 25% of male victims reported multiple assaults by the same person.

In Virginia and nationally, incidences of sexual assault continue to be severely underreported. According to the NCVS, in 2003 less than 40% of victims reported the assault to the police, a lower rate than any other violent crime. Although national reporting rates for sexual assault have increased dramatically in the past decade, the reporting rate continues to be less than 50%. In Virginia, only 12% of female victims and less than 7% of male victims reported the crime to the police (Masho & Odor, 2003).

Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Data

When sexual assault is reported to law enforcement, police officers are the first responders and play a critical role in the investigation of a sexual assault, from interviewing the victim, following leads and gathering evidence in a thorough and comprehensive manner. The police response to sexual assault not only represents the first contact a victim has with the criminal justice system, but also continues to have an impact throughout the rest of the process.

Between 1999 and 2001, there were an average of 1,720 reports of forcible rapes in Virginia, of which 503 (29%) resulted in arrest. (Crime in Virginia, 1999 & 2000 & 2001). According to data reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) through the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), national clearance rates are typically lower for forcible rape cases than for most violent crimes. For example, in 2002, 44.5% of forcible rape cases known to the police were cleared by an arrest or through exceptional means. This is lower than for murder (64%), aggravated assault (56%), and is only higher than robbery (25.7%) among violent crimes for which the UCR collects data.

The Virginia State Sentencing Commission provides an annual report on the number of convictions and compliance with state sentencing guidelines. Between 2001 and 2003 there were, on average, about 225 annual convictions for forcible rape (about 45% of the average arrests for rape). There are on average about twice as many convictions for sexual assault each year (479) than for rape. For sentencing, judges are provided a standard sentence range (a presumptive sentencing range) depending on the type and severity of the offense and the offender’s prior record. However, judges can depart from the recommended sentence if they provide a reason in writing. Over two-thirds of both rape and sexual assault cases receive sentencing that complies with guidelines. Of the nearly one-third of cases whose sentences did not comply with guidelines, a large percentage of forcible rape cases received a lower sentence than recommended, while for sexual assault cases, an equal percentage received sentencing above and below the recommended sentence.

The time constraints of this study did not permit additional analysis of law enforcement and criminal justice response. Further study is recommended.

Medical Treatment and Services

Emergency departments (ED) in Virginia were surveyed regarding their response to sexual assault. The survey identified several gaps in service. Half of all EDs do not have a forensic nurse on staff, and 44% do not offer a forensic nurse to all victims. EDs also have significant training needs that are not being met. Almost half (46%) do not have a formal training plan, and only a small minority (14%) report having provided training about sexual assault to medical staff in the past year and over a quarter of EDs rated their training as fair or poor (39%). EDs also need help in implementing universal screening for sexual assault victimization. Only a small minority do so (5%) and about one-third (34%) rate themselves as fair or poor in screening. Further, over a quarter of hospitals do not offer the services of a sexual assault crisis companion/advocate for the victim during the examination, and one in five do not offer to have a sexual assault crisis advocate meet with the victim.

Primary care practices were also surveyed. The most critical finding emerging from the primary care practice survey is that the primary care medical practices, for the most part, do not view sexual assault as an issue for their patients. Many did not complete the survey, stating that ‘they don’t see rape’, or that ‘they refer ‘that’ to the emergency department’. Even among those that responded to the survey, most (75%) do not usually screen for sexual assault, so they probably do not know the extent to which past and current victims make up a part of their patient base. Most practices (89%) do not have any staff trained to assist victims of sexual assault and less than one-third have a relationship with a sexual assault crisis center. The primary medical practices recognize these needs: over one-fourth rated themselves fairly or poorly in training (78%), working with a sexual assault crisis center (41%), screening patients (31%), and working with patients who have been sexually assaulted by intimate partners (28%).

Sexual Assault Crisis Center Delivery

There are currently 37 sexual assault crisis centers in Virginia. Of those 37, only 12 agencies address sexual assault alone. The remaining 25 address both sexual assault and domestic violence with varying degrees of resources specifically allotted to sexual assault. The most common types of counseling/support services the centers provide are individual support, crisis counseling, follow-up counseling, and support groups. Less common are services such as individual therapy, support groups for partners of sexual violence victims, male survivor groups, and teen survivor groups. Personal advocacy, court accompaniment, medical accompaniment, and accompaniment on law enforcement interviews are among the more common accompaniment/advocacy services. Sexual assault crisis centers also routinely help victims file victim compensation claims and fill out victim impact statements. They are rarely involved in providing expert witness testimony or academic advocacy. Additionally, emergency assistance services, emergency clothing, food, shelter, and transportation are provided by about sixty percent of the crisis centers. The centers routinely make referrals to several agencies including mental health providers, medical professionals, the commonwealth's attorneys, legal advocates, victim/witness advocates, substance abuse counselors, food/clothing providers, and transportation assistance.

The sexual assault crisis centers devote much effort to education and public awareness. General community education, agency brochures, volunteer training, and training of allied professionals are the most common types of educational services provided by the centers. Many centers also offer prevention initiatives and sexual harassment training in the workplace. Fewer centers offer peer education groups or advertise their services through marketing techniques such as television, radio, and yellow page advertisements due to lack of resources.

According to results of interviews with staff of sexual assault crisis centers, inadequate staffing presents a challenge for many of the centers. In addition to staffing, many crisis centers often are unable to provide the following types of needed services due to lack of funding: services for specific groups of victims such as partners of sexual assault victims; elder abuse victims; male sexual assault survivors; child victims; and teen victims; public awareness campaign strategies, such as billboard, television, and radio ads to promote awareness about the centers’ services and educate the public about sexual assault; and sign-language and foreign language interpreters.

Sexual assault crisis center directors were also asked to identify the major challenges to doing sexual violence work in their communities. The general challenges cited consistently by the directors were a lack of awareness in the community about sexual violence, need for prevention services, victim-blaming attitudes (blaming the victim for the sexual assault) and a lack of resources.

Prevention

At the state level, Virginia does have a state sexual violence prevention plan that was developed in 2003 by representatives from the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), VDH and the Department of Education (DOE), and Virginians Aligned Against Sexual Assault (VAASA), Virginia Against Domestic Violence (VADV), the Virginia Campus Task Force Against Sexual Assault, and a local sexual assault crisis center. The five goals of the Virginia Sexual Violence Prevention Plan (VSVPP), completed in 2003, are to ensure that: sexual violence prevention and intervention services are adequately funded; data are used to improve sexual violence prevention and intervention; comprehensive sexual violence services are accessible in every Virginia community; effective and comprehensive sexual violence prevention strategies are implemented across Virginia; and public policies are reformed to respond effectively to sexual violence through prevention and intervention.

Local sexual assault crisis centers are the primary providers of sexual assault prevention services in communities across Virginia. Focus groups and interviews with sexual assault crisis staff and campus sexual assault center staff indicated that many of their prevention efforts are school based and focused on young people so as to reach individuals before adulthood when victimization may have already taken place. All twenty-six sexual assault crisis centers that responded to the survey indicated that they provide general community education. However, many centers have few prevention staff to cover a large service area or are lacking funding to carry out adequate prevention programming.

Colleges and universities present a unique aspect of the problem of sexual assault. One of the barriers facing sexual assault campus centers is the institutional support for prevention efforts. Representatives almost unanimously agreed that college and university administrators do not place a great deal of emphasis on actively using educational strategies to prevent sexual assault.

Collaboration

Crisis center directors or their representatives were surveyed to identify problems they had collaborating with various groups (i.e. law enforcement, criminal justice, victim-witness professionals, and health care professionals). Some directors cited positive relationships with law enforcement and praised the work of police but the following were noted as barriers to collaboration: exclusion of advocates from the criminal justice process; inconsistent collection of evidence by law enforcement; questioning the credibility of victims by law enforcement; ignoring acquaintance rape; victim blaming; requesting polygraph tests of victims; denial of occurrence of sexual abuse in communities; misunderstanding the dynamics and sensitivity of sexual assault; and lack of clear policies on response to sexual assault.

Some directors described strong collaboration with criminal justice agencies. Other crisis center directors cited several different challenges they encountered with criminal justice agencies (e.g., courts, judges, prosecutors) including resistance to prosecuting certain sexual abuse cases; judicial understanding of sexual assault; concerns about interpretation of the law, re-victimization and communication problems. Victim-witness professionals are part of criminal justice agencies, but they may have more contact with sexual victims and sexual assault crisis centers than other criminal justice professionals. Collaboration between sexual assault crisis centers and victim-witness programs was reported as effective in some instances. Other challenges in collaborating with victim-witness professionals as noted by sexual assault crisis center directors include territorialism and loyalty to the criminal justice system; accessibility; communication; and awareness of sexual assault issues.

Some directors reported positive relationships with local health care providers. Distance from the health care providers, referrals, role definitions and awareness of sexual assault as a health issue were reported as challenges.

Sexual assault crisis center directors were asked about challenges they faced when working with mental health workers. Problems that they encountered included role ambiguity, inappropriate referrals, funding related problems, and misunderstanding of sexual assault.

Sexual assault crisis center directors were asked about barriers they encountered working with social services workers. Their comments were limited to a few words, positive and negative and there were no clear patterns.

Summary of Recommendations

The various groups involved in this study made several recommendations on how to improve the sexual assault responses and prevention programs and activities of law enforcement, sexual assault crisis centers and other advocacy and support services, medical personnel, and the judicial system. These recommendations are summarized below:

Collaboration

1. The General Assembly should consider funding for the development and support of strong regional or local sexual assault coalitions to include sexual assault, health, mental health, law enforcement, criminal justice, education, and social services personnel.

2. The General Assembly should consider forming a statewide legislative Commission on Sexual Violence; similar to the 1997 Virginia Commission on Family Violence, to review the findings and recommendations of this report and support implementation activities, or alternatively the Crime Commission might be requested to do so.

Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice

3. The General Assembly should request a review of training for law enforcement and criminal justice personnel and recommend changes and funding to improve the amount and quality of training.

4. The General Assembly should request the Attorney General’s Office to conduct a comprehensive review, in cooperation with Action Alliance, of the usage of polygraphs on victims of sexual assault in comparison to other crimes in Virginia and issue an opinion.

5. The General Assembly should require the Department of Criminal Justice Services to provide detailed guidance to law enforcement agencies, Commonwealth's Attorney's offices, victim advocates, and hospitals on the proper authorization and reimbursement for physical evidence recovery kits.

Emergency Departments and Primary Health Care

6. The Virginia Department of Health and the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance should work with primary care practices and other health care professionals to assure screening of patients for sexual assault.

7. The Virginia Department of Health should work with the Emergency Departments in the state and the General Assembly to ensure that each victim of sexual assault has access to a forensic nurse examiner in the ED or in sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) programs.

8. The Virginia Department of Health and Action Alliance should work with professional organizations such as the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA), the Virginia Nurses Association, and the Medical Society of Virginia (MSV) to raise awareness of sexual assault as a health care issue with health care personnel, in particular those in primary care practice and emergency departments and develop model written policies and training materials on the care of victims of sexual assault for hospital emergency departments and primary care practices.

9. Local sexual assault crisis centers should partner with local primary care practices to provide effective services to current and past victims of sexual assault.

Sexual Assault Crisis Centers

10. Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance should conduct a comprehensive needs assessment in conjunction with Virginia Department of Health and Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services and make a funding recommendation to the General Assembly.

11. A comprehensive study of law enforcement response to sexual assault should be conducted in cooperation with DCJS, VSDVAA, and the Supreme Court. Representation from law enforcement, the Commonwealth’s Attorney office, the courts and victim advocates should be included.

12. The General Assembly to consider allocating funds for public education campaigns in all Virginia communities to raise awareness of the problem of sexual assault with the message that individuals and communities will not engage in or support sexual assault.

13. The Virginia Department of Health, Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance, and local Sexual Assault Crisis Centers should work collaboratively and continue their efforts to expand services, reach out to underserved populations, promote awareness of the problem of sexual assault, promote awareness of the sexual assault crisis centers, and increase collaboration with other agencies.

Colleges and Universities

14. The General Assembly should consider appropriating state funds for a statewide position to promote consistency and encourage cooperation, collaboration, and information sharing on sexual assault among colleges and universities in Virginia.

15. The General Assembly should consider appropriating state funds for expansion of services by campus sexual assault centers to prevent sexual assault, increase awareness of the problem and reach underserved students.

Prevention

16. The General Assembly should consider appropriating funds for public education campaigns in all Virginia communities to raise awareness of the problem of sexual assault.

17. The Virginia Department of Health should review sexual assault prevention programs and identify those that show successful outcomes for implementation in select localities.

18. The Department of Education should consider implementing an age-appropriate curriculum to prevent, recognize, respond and refer sexual assault in all schools (kindergarten through higher education) and incorporate sexual assault prevention education in the Standards of Learning.

Further Research

19. Future research should include a survey of pediatric health care providers as a significant percentage of sexual assault victims are children and adolescents who may still be receiving care from pediatricians.

20. The General Assembly should consider requesting a study to assess the emotional and physical health needs of victims of past sexual assault and the ability and requirements of the service system to address these needs.