Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Program Cut

In November  Governor Deval Patrick cut $1 million (one third of the budget) from the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Program.  The program had already been cut $500,000 since last year.  

The SANE program trains and funds nurses who are contacted whenever a survivor reaches a designated hospital; it funds advocates who are on call 24 hours a day to accompany survivors to the hospital and it funds Children's Advocacy Centers that play a special role for children who are survivors of sexual abuse.  These programs play a crucial role, not only in providing compassionate services to survivors, but also in ensuring that evidence is collected and handled properly so that rapists are identified, prosecuted and convicted.

On Thursday, Nov 19, the MA legislature voted to partially restore the SANE line item by including $400K  in the supplemental budget.  Now the bill is  on the Governor's desk to be signed.  Advocates are asking the Governor to match these funds with $600K from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services so that funding for essential sexual assault services is completely restored.  

The SANE program was 12 years in the making. Nurses and victims advocates learned that the best way to work with a person who had been raped was with a deeper sense of care than even the most sensitive emergency room could provide. A partnership was formed, of medical professionals working with rape crisis centers and other agencies to reach out to victims, more than 1,700 within the past year. “It’s truly a system that makes all the difference in the world for survivors and their families,’’ said Gina Scaramella, executive director of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center.

-From: http://www.stopfamilyviolence.org/pages/498%20retrieved 11/27/09 and “ Rape treatment plan facing big budget cut: Advocates say work is crucial” By Milton J. Valencia, The Boston Globe, November 5, 2009 http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/11/05/advocates_for_rape_treatment_program_fight_major_budget_cut/ retrieved 11/5/09.

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