A Bill for Sexual Assault Survivors

Today, Senate Democrats proposed a bill that would extend more rights to survivors of sexual assault. The Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act would guarantee a number of things:

It requires steps to ensure that people who have been sexually assaulted have access to a trained sexual assault counselor and comprehensive information about victims’ legal options. For individuals who submit to a rape kit, the bill would give them the right to know the location of the evidence, whether the kit has been tested, and the test results.

The bill guarantees these rights whether or not the person reports the crime to law enforcement or agrees to press charges. It also creates a task force to examine how well the changes are implemented, to include representatives from diverse communities and advocacy backgrounds.

The bill was inspired by 24 year old Amanda Nguyen, a State Department employee who was raped two years ago in Massachusetts. The statute of limitations in the state is 15 years, but she learned through a pamphlet that the state could destroy her rape kit within 6 months unless she filed an extension request. Nguyen described a confusing a stressful process in trying to figure out how to even do that: who to contact, how to file, and having to do it every six months. "The system essentially makes me live my life by date of rape,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen became an activist after researching different states' laws regarding sexual assault and the victims' legal process and formed the volunteer group Rise in order to get attention and sponsorship for the bill.

I thought this article was interesting because at the beginning of the semester, we had talked about how thousands of rape kits are backlogged throughout the country, but I had no idea that they could just be destroyed without the victim's knowledge. What's encouraging, though, is that the article is about the bill and Nguyen's role as an activist who happens to be a victim of sexual assault. It mentions that she's a member of the State Department aspiring to be an astronaut, but those details aren't used in a Virgin frame to make anyone pity her for being a victim. Yes, the article uses the astronaut angle for some cheap clever lines, but she maintains her agency. She's framed as an empowered individual, and the article provides no details about her assault at all because that's not the focus of the story.