Must Read: “You Are Not a Rape Victim Unless Police Say So.”

Amanda Hess has an amazing investigative piece up at the Sexist that gives a tell all account of a young Howard student’s awful experience with trying to obtain a rape kit. The story is scary, honest and truly infuriating.
Trigger Warning
In Hannah’s attempt to report her rape and receive a rape kit, that she was refused the night before because she was not able to consent to the kit, despite her friends urging the hospital to administer one, the following happened.

Later, D.C. police officer Michael Minor reported to the hospital to take a report from Hannah. In a notebook, he recorded Kerston’s information as a witness, noted the location of the party, and sketched a description of the suspect. Then, he called the Sexual Assault Unit, where he was patched into Spriggs. Minor told Spriggs he had a victim complaining of sexual assault and needed a rape kit authorized. Though D.C. police policy requires detectives to report to the scene to interview the victim in person, Spriggs decided to do this one by phone. Spriggs told Minor to put Hannah on the line. Spriggs, sitting in the SAU office, determined that Hannah hadn’t been the victim of a crime. “She told me that she was at a party. And she remembered kissing a guy,” Spriggs testified. “I repeated back to her what she said to me. And there was a pause,” he said. Back on the phone with Minor, “I said, this young lady, she’s not reporting anything, she’s not reporting a crime to me. I’m not bringing a sex kit up here.” Spriggs then testified as to why he didn’t press Hannah to explain why she needed a kit: “I’m not going to feed you any information to give you an opportunity to embellish you story,” Spriggs testified. “If you are reporting something to me, then you should be able to tell me what that is. And she did not report any crime to me.”
Hannah testified that she did tell Spriggs she had been raped, but that he informed her “I would not be able to receive a sex kit because I do not know the person or whoever it was last name,” she said. “I didn’t know the last name. So I could not receive the sex kit.” Minor left without filling out a police report documenting Hannah’s sexual assault allegation.

Please, go read the whole thing. The story goes from victim-blaming to slut-shaming to downright neglect of basic human rights and highlights a powerful group of young women that were quite aware of wrong and right and knew something was wrong, but didn’t have the tools or support to ameliorate the situation. The next time someone you know tries to victim blame shoot them this story.
UPDATE: We posted on this story when it first came out.