Treating Rape Victims

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has joined the Los Angeles Police Department in increasing payments to hospitals that conduct extensive examinations of rape victims designed to prepare stronger evidence against their attackers. Overdue, the announcement is nonetheless a welcome breakthrough in resolving a problem that has added to the trauma of rape victims by denying them treatment at some area hospitals. More still needs to be done.

First, county and city officials should survey hospitals to see if they are indeed accepting victims and doing the exams. It is all well and good for the Hospital Council of Southern California to negotiate increases in the reimbursement, but that agreement is not binding on individual hospitals. The survey would save deputies and police officers, and above all victims, unfortunate delays if hospitals still won’t perform the exams.

Hospitals are entitled not to conduct the more extensive exams now required under the new state rules if they don’t think their staff or equipment are adequate to do the job. But they are supposed to notify law enforcement officials and other agencies that are better equipped to help rape victims. In some cases they simply have not done that. The hospitals have a valid point that the exam, including the time of doctors and nurses as well as operation of the emergency room, costs more than the $200 the county and city will now be paying them. But once government finally resolves the money issue, the escape clause should be struck. Hospitals have no business turning away rape victims; as state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) said, they don’t turn away people with gunshot wounds.

This survey should also make sure hospitals have agreed to use the new protocol. Some resumed doing the exams when Senate President Pro Tem David Roberti (D-Hollywood) urged them to do so until a solution had been found, but at least one was doing the exams under the old, less-demanding rules. That’s better than nothing but not nearly good enough.

In addition to this action on the local level, the Legislature must take up the issue when it returns to work in January. Gov. George Deukmejian should make himself conspicuous on the issue, too. It is, after all, a law-and-order issue and the problem exists because his administration issued the rules in question. The governor must help the Legislature find money for this crucial program.