Instagram highlight: Sexual Assault Victims Advocacy week

Image description: A colorful background with blues and reds. Text reads: “Austin: Options after an unwanted sexual experience. You do not have to go to the hospital or call the police.”

Image description: A colorful background with blues and reds. Text reads: “Evidence collection without a report to law enforcement: You can collect and save evidence while you think about reporting. Adults 18 years or older in Texas are able to have evidence collected and stored for 5 years. Your evidence collection kit will not be tested unless you decide to report to police. This option is available for up to 5 days after an assault. This option is not available for members of protected populations” (such as children).

Image description: A colorful background with blues and reds. Text reads: “Medical care: Nurses at SAFE can provide preventative medicine for common sexually transmitted infections. SAFE’s nurses can consult and make referrals for strangulation and/or HIV PEP. This option is available for up to 10 days after an assault.”

Image description: A colorful background with blues and reds. Text reads: “Community resources and safety planning: Confidential advocates at SAFE can help with your immediate needs, risk assessment, and provide referrals to resources such as follow-up care, housing and lease breaking, counseling, delayed reporting, and more. Our team of compassionate advocates can help guide you through your options before speaking with law enforcement and can continue to assist you after an exam. This option has no expiration date.”

Image description: A colorful background with blues and reds. Text reads: “Call/text/chat our 24/7 SAFE hotline to get connected to a nurse or advocate.”

Image description: A colorful background with greens and yellows. Text reads: “Sexual violence myth busting: There are many misconceptions around what a SANE exam (rape kit) can and cannot do. Even more importantly, there are many myths about how a person should respond during and after an unwanted sexual experience. **Trigger warning: sexual assault.”

Image description: A colorful background with greens and yellows. Text reads: “Myth: If I don’t have physical injuries, I must not have been assaulted. Truth: The presence or absences of injury has nothing to do with consent. Physical injuries are not as prevalent as SVU would have us believe.”

Image description: A colorful background with greens and yellows. Text reads: “Myth: I didn’t fight back — doesn’t that mean it wasn’t rape? Truth: Hard no. When we’re experiencing something traumatic, our brains react without consulting us. We go into flight, fight, freeze, or fawn mode so that we get out of the situation as safely as possible. The latter two are the most common responses. Freezing looks like being unable to move or act against an attack. Fawning looks like saying and doing things to appease the perpetrator in hopes of no further harm. And this is all done subconsciously. We know it’s complicated. But assault doesn’t always look like saying ‘no’ and fighting back.”

Image description: A colorful background with greens and yellows. Text reads: “Myth: The nurse can tell if I’ve been assaulted. Truth: The nurse cannot confirm an assault occurred. The nurse can collect evidence for potential DNA and document any visible injuries. The presence of foreign DNA (DNA that’s not you!) or bodily fluids can be analyzed by a lab. However, just because no evidence was found and there were no physical injuries, doesn’t mean an assault didn’t happen.”

Image description: A colorful background with greens and yellows. Text reads: “Myth: A SANE exam gets tested for DNA at the clinic. Truth: There is no testing done at the hospital or clinic. When an assault is reported, the SANE kit is sent by law enforcement to a lab, they then have 90 days (with sufficient resources) to analyze the swabs taken. When an assault is not reported but evidence is still collected, that kit will be sent to a storage facility for up to five years and will not be tested unless the survivor chooses to report to law enforcement.”

Image description: A colorful background with greens and yellows. Text reads: “Myth: A nurse can test right away if I’ve contracted a Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI). Truth: The CDC recommends a one- to two- week waiting period from the time of a sexual encounter (consensual or not) before testing for STIs. We can provide free preventative antibiotics at our clinic or set up a free appointment for follow-up testing.”

Image description: A colorful background with greens and yellows. Text reads: “Myth: A SANE exam (rape kit) is just swabbing my body. Truth: A full exam with every component (it’s all optional — nothing is required) takes around 3-5 hours. The physical evidence collection is the last 30-60 minutes of an exam. The longest bit is a bunch of talking: medical history (like stuff a doctor’s office asks), what tasks you’ve performed since the incident (Did you brush your teeth? — that’s ok! The nurses just need to know), where specifically did the person touch you? And safety planning and resource sharing.”