Processing of victims of sexual assaults

[Sticks]

I came across the case of Louise Ogborn who was an employee at McDonalds who in 2004 was stripped of her clothes and sexually assaulted on the orders of a voice on the phone claiming to be a police officer. Link Removed by Cat which has part of the story, some of you in the US may be more familiar with the case. If I saw the end of the tape correctly when they realised they had been hoaxed called the police, it looks like they allowed the victim to get dressed. According to one press report another assistant manager wrapped a blanket around the victim as she was suffering from hypothermia.

Question. I was always under the understanding that victims of SA were not allowed to shower or do anything until they had been processed to avoid the compromising of evidence. So by allowing the employee to get dressed before the police were on scene, did they in theory compromise evidence, especially as, from the video, part of the assault resulted in injuries to the victim's rear end. Would the security recording of the attack had sufficed?

What is protocol in these cases, do victims have to wait before receiving any medical aid until they are processed.

Usually on the CSI programme they are photographing them at the hospital, although on the CSI Miami episode where they introduced CSI NY, Stella insisted on photographing a stabbing victim before he went off in the ambulance.

Edited by Cat: I removed the link; my explanation is in a couple of posts below.

 

[adorelo]

Well, they can't force you to prosecute, and they can't force you to undergo a sexual assult kit and people who don't work in law enforcement are often primarily concerned with the victims emotional state then they are with protecting evidence.

I've been talking to my aunt (federal agent) and she says while there is a set protocol which should be followed, it must also be manipulated and altered to fit in with each individual attack. For example, if person X had been attacked and was feeling weak and terrified, protecting that victim from further mental harm would be the priority. If person Y was attacked and was angry and determined to find the assailent, they would be more likely to want to go straight to the hospital.

Also, with sexual assaults, the majority of the evidence is internal and even the evidence that isn't, it's only like a crime scene (every contact leaves a trace). It's just about finding where the contact took place and where the trace ended up ( like evidence brushing on clothing.)

If you have any more questions, I'll ask my aunt

Jodie x

 

[KenGoddard]

Sticks said:
What is protocol in these cases, do victims have to wait before receiving any medical aid until they are processed.

Safety and security of the victim always comes first. There's nothing wrong with getting the victim clothed (ideally in clean clothes) or wrapped in a blanket. The victim should be transported to a hospital or medical facility ASAP, where the staff should have at least a basic understanding of the need to preserve sex-assault-related evidence while tending to the victim's medical needs. In any case, the CSIs can always work the scene (where there should be plenty of evidence related to the assault) after the victim is transported.

 

[Sticks]

In this case would the CSI be happy to use the security tape or would they have needed to have processed the victim as well (Belt and Braces approach to quote a British expression)

 

[Sticks]

KenGoddard said:
Safety and security of the victim always comes first. There's nothing wrong with getting the victim clothed (ideally in clean clothes) or wrapped in a blanket.

I forgot earlier to thank you for your answers, sorry.

Looking at this case again and turning it around as it were, in light of what KenGoddard says, which is obviously right and I would have to agree with, but suppose after they realised it was a hoax and called the police, someone who has seen a few CSI programmes got the managers to not allow the girl to have her clothes back and get dressed until the police came and processed her, so she had to continue to sit shivering away with just the apron, as in the footage, what kind of reaction would you expect the officers arriving on scene have to this.

Let's say the managers tell the cops they withheld the girls clothes because they thought they had to.

I realise this is now in the realm of ridiculous speculation given what appears to have occurred in the actual clip where they seem to have allowed her to get dressed, but given the so called "CSI Effect" critics of the programme talk about I did wonder if someone would be stupid enough to actually do this, given that you can never under estimate people's capacity to act stupidly

This whole case kind of got me depressed about the depravity of what some people stoop to, and also back in 2001 someone tried a hoax on me which was unpleasant but I did have the presence of mind to surreptitiously check them out and prove it was a hoax.

 

[Cat]

Hi, i'd like to mention about the video; i edited out the link because i felt that it wasn't suitable for a public forum.
However, in reply, it depends on the situation. Evidence should be taken, although it's not always taken, so if the victim gets dressed it would probably be a set of neutral cloths; something that won't contaminate evidence or, if need be, collected afterwards.

 

[T'Bonz]

Just chiming in to back up the mod and to say that the link was a bit too much for this BBS.

Ugh. I had to watch that.

 

[Sticks]

My apologies, I thought that because the clip was from ABC News Primetime which had been broadcast in the US, and that they had blurred out parts of the video to make it suitable for the original broadcast it would be safe. I have now got a link to the whole programme which details of how they tracked the caller but I will hold back on that one to avoid further offence - Sorry

 

[Sticks]

I have been going through my old postings, and came across this one. I was looking at my hypothetical variant of what happened in the Ogborn case and this so called CSI effect. I later used my hypothetical scenario for a story I did elsewhere, where an old lady blocked people from helping a victim, because she was a fan of CSI and thought she had to preserve the crime scene Would that really be a far fetched turn of events? In a later CSI one of the senior CSI's possibly Grissom observed that life comes first.

 

[Dizzney]

I think that is someone taking it a bit too far. Saving a life always comes first. I also think of in No Humans Involved episode, where Brass asks Sara if he should take the mother of the children to see her dead son first or the live ones first. Sara said, go with the living, the dead can wait.