University of Virginia Nursing professor Kathryn Laughon is testing a new dye that will better reveal tissue lacerations and abrasions for women of color who have been raped. The blue dye currently used on all women examined after a suspected sexual assault works well on light-skinned women, but not as well on dark-skinned women. The need is great:
• Women of color comprise 36.3 percent of the female population in the U.S., which totals 157 million. • One in four women are sexually assaulted; one in six raped (and that statistic climbs to one in three for American Indian women). • Of those women raped every year, 18.8 percent are black, 6.8 percent are Asian Pacific Islander, 37 percent are Alaskan and 24.4 percent are mixed race.• Percentage of rapists who are never incarcerated: 97 percent
(According to statistics from the 2010 Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Justice, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network and the Center for American Progress.) Laughon, who is also a forensic nurse examiner, on how examinations are currently done:When women are examined after a suspected sexual assault, one of the first basic steps of the forensic nurse is to swab their genitals with a blue dye to fully reveal the extent of the injuries and tissue damage, both large and small, on areas of the body that are not easily examined with the naked eye(the dye is brushed on the inner and outer labia, as well as the clitoral hood, on the perineum, and anus). The nurse typically applies the dye, wipes it off, and areas of injury “light up.” Nurses like Laughon who work with sexual assault victims see two to three times as many injuries with the dye as without, so it’s a critical step in assessing what’s happened – and documenting it. For women of color, the contrasts don’t “light” in the same way. And if injuries don’t show, they’re not documented, and the perpetrators ultimately may never be prosecuted.
Research has repeatedly found that black women who are raped are much less likely to move through the criminal justice system than their white peers, which may be due in large part to the way the dye works – or doesn’t work – on them. Laughon's research, in its early stages, is looking to find a dye that works on people of all skin colors. Laughon is looking at already existing fluorescent dyes to see what best captures injuries on every skin type and color while not interfering with any subsequent DNA analyses. She wants to be sure that the fluorescent dye isn’t painful or irritating. From there, she plans to test the dye on women who’ve just had consensual sex (which produces microtears and injuries too) to see about the dye’s pickup; this step will also help understand what injuries from consensual sex look like and compare them to injuries of rape victims. Of the candidate dyes they’re testing, they’re zeroing in on several already used in eye procedures that contain flourozene. “I don’t have a magic way to tell what happened,” says Laughon, “but at least all the victims are getting the same effectiveness from an exam. When we do find significant injuries, perpetrators are twice as likely to be charged, and then twice as likely to go to jail.” A unique aspect of Laughon’s research is that it’s one of two projects seeking funding in an innovative six-month pilot program launched this month by the University of Virginia. It’s U.Va.’s first foray into crowdfunding. Laughon’s project, “Reducing Inequity in Forensic Exams Following Sexual Assault,” being done in collaboration with Shayn Peirce-Cottler in U.Va.’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and Cassandra Fraser in the Department of Chemistry, is seeking to raise $19,000.
“Raising a relatively small amount of research funding through crowdfunding would help us go a long way toward identifying a solution to this important problem,” Laughon says.
More on Laughon’s project and crowdfunding is here. A report in USA Today on crowdfunding is here.
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