Pamphlets in hand, tears rolling down her cheeks, the young woman walked slowly away from the hospital emergency room into the early morning darkness.
She was alone and confused.
“I just felt so lost,” she said, wiping away fresh tears as she shared her story.
“I don’t know how to explain how I feel about it. I didn’t want to tell anyone that I went to the hospital. It just felt like I wasn’t their problem to deal with.”
The 22-year-old Truro woman did not wish to be identified. She was recounting a recent visit to the emergency department of Colchester East Hants Health Centre to report she’d been raped.
There, she was handed two pamphlets on the subject of sexual trauma and spoke briefly by telephone to a nurse at another hospital who is with the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program. Beyond that, she said she was essentially told the SANE program is not available in Truro and to “just go and handle it yourself.”
“When I hung up the phone I was, like, what do I do now? Do I call the police or…?”
The woman said she received no guidance and never spoke to anyone beyond front-line staff.
“I had bruises all over me,” she said. “I honestly thought something would be done. I didn’t even have a ride home. It would have been nice to talk to a doctor; I don’t know anything about what to do or what could’ve went wrong. Because it was a situation that I didn’t remember.”
Feeling embarrassed and exposed, the woman said she was offered neither consolation nor privacy.
“I was visibly crying,” she said.
“I was trying not to show the pamphlets. Nobody else got pamphlets, ‘Why did she get pamphlets? Why is she crying?’” she remembered thinking of her situation.
“They didn’t even give me a second to collect myself, they just kind of moved me along … tears were basically still rolling down my face when I had to slide the door shut.”
After leaving the hospital just past midnight, she called her mother for help.
* * *
‘The victim is not in the state of mind to even know what to do.
They’re trusting the health care system to do what they are supposed to do.’
Her mother, who has a Masters degree in nursing, drove her to Antigonish to meet with members of the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital.
The program is not available in Truro and while the rape examination kits are available through the local RCMP detachment, the woman said that information wasn’t provided to her.
“All she was given was two pamphlets,” her mother said. “She was not told what to do or what not to do. She was not told to save her clothing, to document the bruises, to be careful about her fingernails because of the evidence underneath them… all of that. They never told her not to take a shower.”
And while told SANE teams are available in Halifax and Antigonish, the woman said she was not told there was access to the program at the much-closer Aberdeen Hospital.
“So we could have just gone to New Glasgow,” her mother said.
The most contentious issue though, she said, was the fact her daughter was sent out into the night without receiving any type of care.
“The victim is not in the state of mind to even know what to do. They’re trusting the health care system to do what they are supposed to do,” she said.
When someone presents to the hospital with other types of medical issues, she said, it is the hospital staff who provide direction. And she said that should be no different for sexual assault victims.
“Sexual assault, sexual violence in the era of METOO has come into the limelight. There is no reason this should ever have happened or gone down this way.
“They never offered counselling, they never offered (sexually-transmitted disease) protection…” she said.
“They put her in an open venue with other clients or patients when they have a quiet room that they use for issues that have to do with mental health and illness and for quiet times when people need that privacy. She wasn’t offered any of that. She was basically shuttled there, here and out because ‘it’s not our problem’.”
In her opinion, the hospital staff who deal with her daughter “didn’t just drop the ball, they biffed it away.”
“As a mother I’m heartbroken for my daughter. We’re the hub of Nova Scotia with a new hospital. As a nurse I am appalled and angered that they could treat anybody in such a cavalier, cold, callous manner. That’s how I feel.”
* * *
Gap exists for treatment of victims
A woman sent away from the Truro hospital without receiving care after reporting as a rape victim is a glaring example of the gap in local services, a proponent says.
“The access to service in your region is an issue and I acknowledge that,” said Heather Blackburn, manager of the community-based Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program in Antigonish. “And my organization has tried to advocate directly with the health authority to increase access and we haven’t had much response.”
Regardless of whether the program is accessible at the Colchester East Hants Health Centre, Blackburn said, no sexual assault victim should be sent away without receiving some medical attention.
“I would say if that were my loved one, I would be very frustrated and disappointed with the lack of information, the lack of accurate information and just basically not offering any support. And that’s really disappointing from my perspective as a sexual assault nurse examiner, as a community member, as a mother. It’s disappointing that individual had that experience at her community hospital in her hometown.”
Blackburn added, however, that in her experience, the response as reported by the Truro woman is the exception.
“I will say, that’s definitely not the average person’s experience because I am in communication with all the other programs,” Blackburn said.
But she feels the woman’s experience could have been entirely different if a SANE program was in place for this area.
Blackburn said in 2015 the province committed to expanding access to SANE service. They funded a program in the western and eastern zones but left the central region as an unserviced area.
“So that whole central area of Colchester, Cobequid, there is no response site within those counties.”
But the lack of the SANE program in Truro should not translate into a complete lack of medical attention and care, said Susan Wilson, provincial SANE coordinator with the Nova Scotia Health Authority.
“If they go to an area where there is no SANE response, first of all, patients should be informed about options for care, including availability of specialized services like SANE or being able to provide those services there…” Wilson said.
“They are capable of providing the medical care, although there is expertise in being able to provide more specialized sexual assault examination,” she said.
A rape examination kit is used for obtaining forensic information that can be used in a subsequent police investigation if a sexual assault victim wants to pursue charges.
While many victims don’t choose that course for a variety of reasons, that doesn’t mean their medical and emotional issues should be overlooked when they go to the hospital seeking help.
But at the very least, the woman should have been examined by a doctor.
“I can say that it’s unfortunate,” Wilson said, of the woman who complained about a lack of service at the Truro hospital. “Patients should be informed about their options for care and if that doesn’t happen that is quite unfortunate. Anyone who goes to any health care facility for health care should be able to access health care,” Wilson said.
“Ideally they should be given all options where they could go, including the closest areas where they could go for safe response.”
