Camera to Aid Hospital’s Sexual Assault Team

To help emergency room workers document sexual assault evidence, the Assistance League of San Fernando Valley recently donated a digital camera to Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

The camera, worth $700, will be used by the hospital’s Sexual Assault Response Team, said Althea Kapur, the league’s public relations chairwoman.

Photographs taken with the digital camera can be downloaded to a computer more easily than those taken with other cameras.

The response team, which began in 1995, comprises doctors, nurses, social workers and others who are trained to work with assault victims at the hospital. Some members, also trained in gathering evidence, can provide expert testimony in criminal trials.

The camera was donated at a holiday lunch Dec. 16. It is the latest service that the League has provided for the hospital. The group, which began in 1989, also creates emergency kits for sexual assault victims.

The kits include a sweatsuit, underwear, sunglasses for battering victims, personal care items, change for phone calls and a note from the League expressing their concern.

“When a woman goes into the emergency room, they will often keep her clothes” for evidence, Kapur said. “If she doesn’t have some support system, she goes home in a hospital gown.”

The league recently started making kits for child-abuse victims, who are treated at the hospital’s Sherman Way campus. These kits contain a sweatsuit, slipper socks, underwear and a stuffed bear.