Sexual assault nurse buys clothes for rape survivors

Taken aback after seeing their discomfort firsthand, this nurse is buying underclothes for rape survivors who enter emergency rooms.❤️

Helping survivors heal from trauma


“There is nothing more important to a survivor of sexual assault to know that they themselves are being cared for.”


Martha Phillips is one of about 2600 sexual assault nurse examiners in the U.S.


On December 2019, Phillips watched a rape survivor walk out of the hospital in oversized scrubs. She tells Brut, “We'd had to take her bra for evidence and we had to take her clothing. And so when she left, we did not have any to replace it… And it just it was really disturbing to her and was really disturbing to us that we had not being able to help someone who had been so traumatized feel more secure in themselves and less embarrassed and less humiliated.”


Phillips then decided to buy $150 worth of bras and underwear to leave them at the hospital


She then shared the picture on Facebook. The post went viral and prompted a number of responses — including from rape survivors. “The second most common response I got to the post was, ‘This happened to me. This is my story. I was raped. I went to a hospital. They took my clothing. They discharged me in a hospital gown and socks on a rainy night. And I had no shoes.’”, Phillips explained.


Every 92 seconds, someone is sexually assaulted in the U.S.


In the immediate aftermath of the sexual assault, a survivor may choose to undergo a forensic examination – also known as rape kit exam. A nationwide shortage of forensic nurses means survivors are often forced to drive from hospital to hospital to find someone trained to examine them. Rape kits are often the only physical evidence a survivor can present in court, but hundreds of thousands of rape kits go untested after they’ve been collected.


Brut.

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Brut.