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County offers strong support for
assault victims
By Philip
Jankowski
With state-of-the-art equipment and
more resources, Williamson County is emerging as one of the
top counties for investigating sexual assaults in the
state.
The county is the first in the
state to offer higher quality cameras for forensic
investigations of sexual assault victims.
That, coupled with the recent
addition of three new examination locations, may have already
had an impact on the amount of sexual assaults reported in the
county.
Johns Community Hospital’s Vangie
Barefoot, who until a few months ago was the lone Sexual
Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) capable of performing forensic
examinations, said she has seen an increased number of sexual
assault reports. She believes the increase is due to the
increased resources for victims.
“We saw almost a 20 percent
increase (of assault reports) in the first month, especially
in Cedar Park,” Barefoot said.
Johns Community Hospital was the
only place where victims could be examined, which District
Attorney John Bradley and Barefoot both said was a deterrent
to some victims because of the commute.
Many victims in west Williamson
County were not willing to make the 45-minute commute after
such a tragic experience, they said.
Barefoot said during the first week
of operations this April at the Regional Medical Center in
Cedar Park, a victim was mistakenly told she would need to
travel to Taylor in order to have an examination. The victim
said she would not travel that far, but when she found out
there was a facility in Cedar Park she had the examination
done.
Bradley said the SANE examinations
are vital in prosecuting assault crimes for two reasons:
evidence and interviews.
Photographs of injuries provide
hard evidence that a crime was committed. DNA evidence found
during the exam also provides a solid connection between the
victim and the assailant, Bradley said.
Interviews are also conducted as
part of the exam and can be used during court proceedings.
Bradley said victims are often a lot more comfortable speaking
to a nurse rather than a doctor or a detective.
The cameras
The $18,500 Secure Digital Forensic
Imaging TeleMedicine System is considered “a digital camera on
steroids” by Bradley. The county recently acquired three of
the cameras, which Barefoot said appear much less invasive
than the culpascope, especially to children.
The new cameras look very similar
to a high-quality digital camera.
“For kids, having a camera is much
more comfortable because kids by and large like having their
picture taken. It’s something that makes them feel more
comfortable,” she said.
Besides being smaller, the cameras
offer a “near CSI” quality image that can zoom in on a single
eyelash follicle in perfect clarity, Bradley said. The
culpascope, which was originally designed to detect cervical
cancer, zooms in, but it loses image quality as it gets
closer.
Along with better image quality,
the new cameras provide security on par with military
standards. All images are transferred with very specific
criteria on who can view them. Barefoot said she can even
specify how many times a person can look at the image file.
The image’s encryption would take a typical computer about 100
years to crack, she said. With the culpascope, nurses must
print out copies of the photos and physically hand them to law
enforcement officials, Barefoot said.
Williamson County will have the
distinction of being the first county in the state to use the
Secure Digital Forensic Imaging cameras. The cameras will be
in full use in early June after SANE nurses are trained how to
operate them.
Qualified SANE nurses in Cedar
Park, Round Rock, Georgetown and Taylor will use the cameras.
One examination room has been set up specifically for children
at the Williamson County Children’s Advocacy Center, which the
center’s Executive Director Jerri Jones said is a much more
“child-friendly” atmosphere than a hospital.
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