New law aims to expand access to care for victims of sexual assault

A nearly decade-long fight for better access to care for rape victims is now law. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed the Violence Against Women Act, which includes provisions of a bipartisan bill to expand access to care for victims of sexual assault.

Washington Senator Patty Murray drafted the legislation after hearing the story of constituent Leah Griffin, of Seattle, who said she was unable to receive a rape examination at her neighborhood hospital in 2014.

“I went to the closest emergency room. I told them what happened,” Griffin said. “They shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘We don’t do rape kits here.’ Hours later, I was able to get a rape kit at a different hospital across the city. But the delay in care caused a catastrophic series of failures in my case, and I never got justice.”

However, now she’s received justice of a different kind — through new legislation aimed at developing national standards of care for victims of sexual assault. The Violence Against Women Act also includes provisions to better study the problem and create a federal grant program to incentivize hospitals to train specialized nurses, known as sexual assault nurse examiners.

“My goal is that every hospital in this country, urban, rural, anywhere, will have someone who is trained as a ‘SANE’ nurse to be able to help a victim of sexual assault, be able to process the evidence that they need,” Murray told CBS News.

A Government Accountability Office report in 2016, requested by Murray, discovered a severe lack of information surrounding the issue, as well as a shortage of resources.

“I was stunned at how many hospitals and health care providers did not have someone trained to be able to do this work,” Murray said. “Since I’ve been working on this, I’ve had so many people come up to me on the street and say, ‘I just had this happen to me.'”

Murray’s co-sponsor, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, says in rural parts of her state, sex assault victims must take a plane ride to receive the necessary care.

The newly passed legislation aims to identify where gaps in the system remain, with the ultimate goal of making sure what happened to Griffin doesn’t happen to anyone else.

“We don’t even know how big this problem is,” Griffin said.

She hopes the bill will allow the government to better understand where the needs remain and target grant funding to the communities that need it most.

“To finally see it across the finish line is the accomplishment of a lifetime,” she said.