The WAMC/NPR program “51%” is featuring St. Peter’s Crime Victim Services (SPCVS) in a two-part series on rape and sexual abuse. The series, which is broadcast on more than 80 public and community radio stations nationwide, includes interviews with Lindsey Crusan-Muse, director of SPCVS; Grace Coons, supervisor of SPCVS’s forensic examiner program; and Emelia Alsen, licensed mental health counselor at SPCVS.
From the story:
Coons is a nurse practitioner and manages about 38 per diem nurses. They take varying shifts to administer forensic examinations for victims of rape and abuse. And the amount of abuse patients they see is… upsetting.
“This year, we’re actually averaging approximately 40 per month,” Coons said. “Last year total, our program saw 280 patients. So far, at the close of May, our program was at 215. So we’re almost double the volume of last year, just with this year.”
Coons says it’s nearly impossible to identify trends of who gets raped or abused.
“There is no set demographic,” Coons said. “It can happen to male, female, transgender, all ages, we see basically from infant all the way to elderly folks in their 80s. So there’s a very wide range of our patient population. So it’s not a specific demographic, or race or anything like that.”
Coons says they see patients for all types of abuse, not just sexual. Usually children come in because of a domestic violence incident.
Click here to listen to Part 1 of WAMC’s series. Part 2 will be broadcast on July 8.
Emilia Alsen, LMHC Photo: WAMC
