‘DIY swab kits? It’s better than doing nothing’: the controversial scheme to tackle rape on campus

I can't say what I want about the private provider...

The Crisis workers who I know are all amazing women who never judge anyone coming in and are treated as part of the vital service of SARC.

I'm sorry to hear the experience of the PP having a poor service at a SARC

@Justasmallgless

that's a great initiative using crisis workers in that way.

the private provide i refer to 🗻 has diminished the role of crisis workers im told. they are glorified cleaners and chaperones. ours are amazingly skilled in support, the art of chatting about anything during the inevitable long waits while i'm dealing with samples and paperwork and helping clients work through options and choices. they do the follow up support calls, make onward referrals that have been agreed on and bring a wealth of experience in other areas to their roles.

to use a well used phrase in our world 'there's more to the job than the swab'.

good crisis workers are worth their weight in gold!

Each university has sexual violence liaison officers or equivalent, and I know our SARC go and do inputs each year to new students to let them know the provision.

Trouble is that PCCs and NHS fumd the SARC and always looking for ways to cut costs.
Having separate ISVA services to the SARC seems to defeat the purpose for me, as we always worked together.

I set up a pilot with our SARC for thé crisis workers to go out with detectives as first responders which worked really well.

As others have said this smacks of a private business trying to sell a product which is worthless

@IwantToRetire

that article in the guardian was very informative.
there is a lot to uncover in terms of the private providers of SARC care. smoke and mirrors with data, poor training standards throwing new staff into working unsupervised far too soon. taking forensic swabs is the easy part, you can pretty much teach anyone that.
managing someone withdrawing from alcohol who is also having a mental health crisis and has locked themselves in the toilet with a blade takes a whole different skill set.
the majority of the largest providers SARC buildings are no where near an NHS hospital and staff have no choice but to ring an ambulance and wait like anyone else. i know people who work or have worked for them and the stories on how they are managed is frightening. good people on the ground (in the main although a heavy culture of your face fitting/bullying - all on Glass Door reviews).
those reporting sexual assault where a SARC is appropriate for them deserve better, much better.
i have fond memories of the Havens as i did some work there a very long time ago. again, good people committed to providing the best in holistic high quality care. NHS run.
they should all come back into the NHS in my view but it won't happen. too many people making serious money out of rape. it's a disgrace.
it needs brave whistleblowers.
i feel i'm de railing the thread so i will try and shut up now!

And in fact thinking about my earlier suggestion of women being able to post on some sort of web site, X account that they had used a swab because of a previous night occurance, within a University even if it didn't out the individual male, you can see men ganging up together and making that woman, or any woman's life hell for going public.

This was something I was very afraid of at uni when it happened to me. It’s often someone you know as the perpetrator - someone in your circle of friends or acquaintances, in a club / society or on your course for example. I was terrified if my allegations became widely known or my ex found out I accused him, he’d absolutely destroy my reputation by making me out to be a liar, or crazy etc etc.

Women are not infrequently accused of lying or exaggerating in relation to sexual assault, and if kits are done in private by the individual, I fear it will only add fuel to those kind of ‘cry rape’ myths and cause more harm.

I’m really sorry to hear this @SANEFNE . I think I know who you’re talking about. They don’t operate the SARC in my area and I hope it stays that way. It’s twenty-odd years since we were setting our SARC up and we wanted it to be excellent. I don’t work in that area now and would hate to think standards have slipped.

these self swab kits give a false sense of access to justice and don't provide the aftercare and support that is often more important than any forensic sampling.

This is very true @SANEFNE, and it feels particularly unfair and misleading in a way that women might be given these when they have no real use and prevent information and resources for support.

i’m very sorry to hear you’re thinking of leaving due to management changes/ buy outs - that sounds like it’s very bad for the service you work at. I’m surprised to hear they’re run for profit.

@igivein
the majority of SARC contracts are NHS and PCC funded but it is a private company that runs them for profit.
some pockets of them remain under the NHS and some smaller providers run others.
i won't name the company here as they are famously litigious and i am aware of journalists keen to lift the lid on their financial practices and profits and the standards of training of staff that fall way short compared to smaller or NHS providers.
they would only sink under demand because the central funding does not convert into the frontline provision.
i am looking to leave, not because i don't care or feel passionate about the care i give, but because i can't work for the primary provider in England who are circling to snap up where my SARC is and i can't allow my integrity and professionalism be compromised as a result. i'm not alone in this.

I'm a forensic nurse examiner. self swabbing is utterly pointless. in the early covid days we sent swab packs out with police officers so people could self swab at home as we weren't allowed to bring anyone into the SARC and our professional body thought this was a good idea. not one of those cases has seen the inside of a court room where the forensics are integral to the case.
anyone over the age of 16 can attend a SARC without reporting to the police and receive the exact same standard of medical, emotional and forensic care as a police case. samples are stored in chain of evidence freezer should someone need thinking time and look at their options without losing the forensic window.
that isn't to detract from how awful it is all round to proceed with a report of sexual assault. the overwhelming majority come down to consent and forensics are useless.
these self swab kits give a false sense of access to justice and don't provide the aftercare and support that is often more important than any forensic sampling.
access to emergency contraception, hepatitis b accelerated immunisation, HIV PEPSE, injuries assessed and documented, emotional support, giving choices and control back, referrals to other services, protected time and space to work through the next steps whatever they might be - the list goes on.
in my view (and the view of all my colleagues) self swab packs should be banned.

This isn’t correct. They were set up as a joint initiative between the health service and the police. In some areas the NHS take the lead in managing the SARC, in other areas it’s the police.
The idea was for it to be a ‘one stop shop’. Victims could go (or be taken) to the SARC, have the forensic medical exam, get certain medical treatment (MAP, STD screening, HIV prophylaxis) without needing to go anywhere else and have to explain what had happened all over again.
They could then work with a trained police officer (if they chose to report) to give their statement in a purpose designed interview suite at the SARC. So the police are very much present, although not normally in uniform.
They could also subsequently access ISVA support and counselling at the SARC.
Many years ago I helped to set up the SARC in my area. Its establishment was very much driven by the police. We were (and still are) very passionate about providing the best service possible, but as with everything, funding has always been an issue and the service overstretched.
Although in theory we should be shouting about SARCs from the rooftops, I really think they would buckle under the weight of increased demand.

Not at all, it seems odd to me thinking back about it now too, and I really hope I got a rogue bad person instead and/ or that things have improved significantly since.

I agree that it might not be the best thing for them to be absorbed into an NHS service. There are obviously parts the NHS can input on, or which require a health perspective, but it’s a very niche thing and needs really careful management as its own service I think. I remember being quite scared when I told the nurse that I was telling someone ‘in authority’ and I would be forced to report it to the police. I wonder if them being under the NHS umbrella might give that impression to people - but that might have just have been my own irrational fear and not something common.

Have checked, it was a SARC - it looks like you can refer yourself without police involvement or you can be referred there by the police. I’m fairly sure the people I spoke to there were police officers but it was a pretty horrible experience and I may be misremembering! Whoever they were, perpetuating rape myths is clearly not a good start!

I think I was perhaps offered counselling but we’re talking literally the day after it happened, so I wasn’t at all in a place to want that sort of support at that time. I didn’t know about the SARC before the police took me there - the first place I went was the doctors to get the morning after pill, and it was a nurse quite sternly asking why I hadn’t used protection who I told first.

I agree that better information about support services would be a very good thing, especially those without police involvement because the feelings afterwards can be extremely complicated and it can be very frightening to go to the police.

I feel like these days women are being continuously gaslit about reporting rape.

The intentions are good, the people doing the messaging want to be more woman-centered. They want to be understanding of all the very valid reasons a woman might be hesitant to call the police in the first few minutes after she has been attacked. None of this kindness is going to increase rape conviction rates.

Successful prosecution and conviction requires evidence. It requires more than just two people telling their story of how events unfolded on some night, however long ago. It absolutely requires a strict chain of custody on any physical evidence that can be gathered. It requires admitting that sometimes the physical evidence can be hard to distinguish between consensual and nonconsensual sex.

its not just sexism and society’s attitudes about promiscuity that make rape conviction rates low. It’s a crime where gathering evidence is hard. If we aren’t honest about that, we are never going to get better at getting these men into prison where they belong.

a self-swab kit is going to be absolutely ripped apart in court by even the most inexperienced barrister, if it is even allowed to be admitted into evidence at all.

I was raped as a student at university by my ex boyfriend. I gave a statement to a police officer at my halls, and then they took me to what I think was a SARC - there were police officers there so I’m not sure if it was or not. During the interview there they raised eyebrows and made comments about the clothes I had been wearing (I had been at a fancy dress party and had been wearing a fairly short skirt and a corset style top, but it was nothing totally outrageous in the scheme of club attire - not that it should matter anyway) and I found them generally judgmental and unsympathetic. I turned down swabs and forensic stuff because I felt it would be retraumatising and I knew I wouldn’t have the guts to go through a trial, and was terrified of my ex who had been very manipulative and controlling while we’d been together.

I hope in the 10 - 15 years since, that people who work at SARCs or police officers dealing with victims are much better trained and not making snide comments about what they were wearing or whether they chose to let the bloke walk them home etc etc etc. But if they haven’t then that should absolutely be the first step before anything else. I felt like that experience was just a pointless reliving of a horrible event, where I was judged by the people who were meant to be helping me. It felt like that’s what the whole process to trial etc would be like, and I couldn’t face the humiliation.

I understand why a self test kit might seem appealing in circumstances like mine. I think I’d have felt like it was a safer option. But like everyone’s pointed out, it’s unlikely to be good evidence as there will be doubts over whether it was done accurately etc, and anyway, most cases turn on consent rather than proving the intercourse happened at all. So it just feels like it’s misleading victims and failing to address the actual underlying reasons we have women scared to come forward and abysmal prosecution rates even when they do.

This is one of the worst things I have every read.

it said in the article that if a case comes to court, the question at issue is consent, not usually identity- so even if the swab was admitted in court and was able to identify the accused (which would depend on him giving a sample, either under orders from the court or voluntarily).....even then, the prosecution would have to prove he knew she did not consent, or should have done

so it is really pointless

agree with all pps, student unions need to promote SARCs to students

I don’t think it’s necessarily the case that it’s a business idea rather than a mission driven approach that’s trying to be sustainable. Lots of charities look for more reliable approaches to funding than relying on donations and grants.

Although as I have said up thread, it maybe that younger women are now so lacking in belie in anything changing, that theatre seems as useful as anything else.

I can see why women might feel that’s the case. My point is that this doesn’t seem like a good idea because theatre won’t improve things either (and I see the possibility it could make things worse).