"You Save as Long as You Have To" (Dr. became DNA archivist to help rape victims)

[Nevilledog]

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ProPublica
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New: Distressed by authorities’ poor treatment of rape victims and destruction of evidence, one doctor became a DNA archivist long before we had the technology to test it. For potentially hundreds of survivors, his faith in science is paying off.

“You Save as Long as You Have To”
Distressed by authorities’ poor treatment of rape victims and destruction of evidence, one doctor became a DNA archivist long before we had the technology to test it. For potentially hundreds of…
propublica.org
2:02 AM · May 22, 2021

https://www.propublica.org/article/you-save-as-long-as-you-have-to


Almost 50 years ago, a woman showed up in the emergency room of a hospital in Maryland. She said she had been raped. A doctor examined her and wrote a report. Dr. Rudiger Breitenecker can recite the words of the report from memory nearly half a century later: “I examined this woman. She said she was raped. She was.”

Breitenecker, a forensic pathologist, worked at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, a hospital just outside the Baltimore city limits, and as an expert in courtrooms across the country.

“Worthless,” he remembered thinking when he reviewed the report from another hospital.

Breitenecker had come to America from Austria after World War II, haunted by the wholesale rapes carried out by Russian soldiers as they swept victoriously through Europe.

“Lawless,” he recalled.

And so what he encountered in Baltimore deeply distressed him. Rape victims sat in emergency rooms for up to 10 hours before being treated and examined. When they did get to see a doctor, the exam was rudimentary. There were no standardized rape kits. And no law required that evidence left by the perpetrators be preserved, so it was often destroyed within months by police or hospitals for no better reason than to save space.

*snip*

[niyad]

1. Blessings to this doctor and his work and advocacy for rape survivors. The treatment of the

Survivors by the institutions that are supposed to help and protect them continues to show how little women matter. Over 400,000 untested rape kits in backlog??

Would you consider cross-posting this very important find in Women's Rights And Issues? Thanks in advance.

[Faux pas]

2. Kickin' with gusto!

[crickets]

3. Thank you, Dr. Breitenecker. Thank you, Sgt. Rose Brady. K&R