In the department of that sounds completely and utterly effed up, via Feministing, a 19 year-old woman who attends Howard University is suing the District, Howard University Hospital and GW Hospital after being denied treatment on the night of and morning after her rape because she “appeared intoxicated.”
The GW Hatchet reports that the woman says that during an off-campus party near Howard in December 2006, the plaintiff was given a date-rape drug that rendered her semiconscious, and she was then allegedly anally raped by someone at the party.
Immediately after, she went to Howard University Hospital with two witnesses, who escorted her to the emergency room. It was there that because she “appeared intoxicated,” — which hey, we don’t know, might have been due to the date rape drug? — the plaintiff was denied a rape kit by doctors and sent home.
She went back to the same ER the next morning and was denied a rape kit a second time. At this point the woman contacted the police, who also said they thought rape kit was unnecessary.
“A sexual assault kit is for police to recover evidence,” said Sergeant Ronald Reid of the MPD Sex Assault Unit. “So if we don’t have reason to believe a crime happened we wouldn’t administer a rape kit.”
GW Hospital comes into the picture now, as the plaintiff, still feeling strongly that a rape kit was in her best interest, continued to seek medical treatment by going to their ER. A doctor at GW, after examining her court records from the call to police, said he would not perform the rape kit either, since the police and Howard had also denied.
Now, there’s a weird typo at the end of the Hatchet story that makes it unclear what common hospital policy is about doing a rape kit if a woman is visibly intoxicated. But even if, let’s say, it turns out most hospitals refuse to give intoxicated women rape kits — doesn’t that seem like something that ought to change, oh, right away? The idea that a woman can be denied a routine exam used to collect evidence in a criminal case because of the drug she inadvertently took that led to her becoming a rape victim is just completely insane. For that matter, the idea that a woman who just had a few drinks at a bar and then was raped would be denied medical treatment is just as abhorrent. Even if she could barely stand and was vomiting everywhere as a result of the date rape drug, why was she denied the kit the following morning, when evidence could still have been successfully collected? Why would the police assume no crime was committed before they had even bothered to look for any evidence?
