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Fox 26 Houston
Another valuable tool has been added to the arsenal in fighting human trafficking in the Houston area. Houston was recently considered to be the largest hub of human trafficking in the country, but in true Houston style, the community is coming out in full force to fight this.
A new task force is in place, and they're teaming up with a group of forensic nurses to help victims while trying to find the evidence to stop their offenders.
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Thanks to all who joined us last week for Advocacy Day in Washington DC. After a morning training and strategy session, 20 states and the District of Columbia were represented as forensic nurses took to Capitol Hill to explain the critical services forensic nursing programs provide to patients in their districts.
With updated research and citations, these evidence-based guidelines summarize knowledge, practice, and collaboration issues involved in providing comprehensive medical forensic examination of the patient who has experienced intimate partner violence or abuse.
March 12, 2020
PREA - Demystifying the Medical Forensic Exam
This webinar will demystify the Sexual Assault Forensic Examination for corrections and community professionals who are responsible for protecting, advocating for, and assisting inmate, detainee, and resident victims and survivors.
March 17, 2020
Exam Adaptations for Survivors with Disabilities
This webinar will review the unique needs of survivors with disabilities and explore best practices for completing medical forensic exams to ensure a safe and accessible experience for all.
March 20, 2020
Service Animals and the Medical Forensic Exam
When a survivor of sexual assault presents to a healthcare facility for a medical forensic exam, and has a service animal - are you prepared to provide care to that patient? This webinar will; 1. Increase familiarity with survivors with disabilities and their use of service animals. 2. Analyze the legal rights of service animal handlers 3. Consider the complexities of working with survivors who have service animals 4. Outline some adaptations that might be helpful to employ in the exam process.
Nurse.com
Forensic nurses in the U.S. are based in many types of settings. Often ED nurses seek training and provide care on their units. These nurses also work in child advocacy and other healthcare centers.
They work one-on-one with patients, according to Nicole Stahlmann, MN, RN, SANE-A, AFN-BC, a forensic nursing specialist at IAFN, who transitioned from ED nursing.
These nurses provide holistic care, looking not just at patients’ evidentiary needs and traumatic incidents, but also at whether patients have other medical or mental issues to address through follow-up counseling and referrals.
Forensic nursing as a subspecialty often suits ED nurses because they have skills that are important to forensic nursing, including the ability to communicate with different people, think critically, problem solve and multitask, according to Sara Jennings, RN, SANE-A, SANE-P, AFN-BC.
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CNN
The guilty verdict in Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault and rape case is being hailed as a turning point in the #MeToo movement, but his attorneys say he never had a chance at a fair trial.
The disgraced movie mogul was convicted of committing a criminal sex act in the first degree involving one woman and rape in the third degree involving another. He was acquitted of the more serious charges of predatory sexual assault involving the two women and one count of first-degree rape.
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Times Higher Education
Despite several years of heightened global attention to the hidden problem of sexual assault, much of Canada still lacks a basic set of policies specific to university campuses, advocates have warned.
Half of Canada’s provinces do not have governmental rules setting expectations for assault prevention and the care and treatment of victims, according to an assessment by student leaders in Alberta.
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Associated Press via U.S. News & World Report
The United States is currently experiencing a nationwide shortage of sexual assault nurse examiners, known as SANEs.
In Virginia, only 16 of 122 licensed hospitals provide sexual assault forensic exams, and only about 150 of the state's 94,000 registered nurses are credentialed forensic nurses, according to a 2019 study by the Virginia Joint Commission on Health Care.
Many other states also fall short.
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NBC Bay Area
They treat us when we’re sick, but now medical workers say they fear for their own health and safety after a rash of assaults at California hospitals. Employees working in healthcare are four times more likely to experience workplace violence than other private employees, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A recent California law aims to address this problem by requiring hospitals to adopt additional safety measures, but after three years, hospital employees tell the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit they’ve yet to see any significant changes.
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Flinders University via PhysOrg
When eyewitnesses are called on to identify crime suspects, how likely are they to make mistakes? Should their seeing equate to believing?
Research shows that mistaken eyewitness identification has played a central role in more than 70 percent of the convictions of innocent people who were later exonerated by DNA testing.
Problems associated with eyewitness identification decisions have long been highlighted by memory researchers with overwhelming evidence that witnesses can err, sometimes with disastrous consequences.
Now, Flinders University's Emeritus Professor Neil Brewer and psychology colleagues have challenged whether police lineups as we know them should be retained when such a weight of evidence is shown to identify errors in the current identification systems.
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PhysicsWorld
Researchers in the UK claim to have developed a microfluidic chip that can rapidly tell whether someone has suffered a traumatic brain injury from a finger-prick blood sample. The optofluidic device detects a biomarker linked to brain injury, based on the way that it scatters light.
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Society for Neuroscience via EurekAlert!
Targeting overactive immune cells and dampening their effects may serve as a new treatment for treating a traumatic brain injury, according to new research in mice published in JNeurosci.
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Windsor Star
For 17 years, she criss-crossed Canada trying to flee the man who raped and tortured her and coerced her into prostitution and sexual slavery.
Regardless of what she did or where she went, her tormentor and the gang that he ran with were never far behind.
When she became pregnant with his child, he beat her badly enough that police were called. No charges were laid.
Over the years, he was twice arrested and convicted, but never jailed for assault or for breaching no-contact orders as part of his probation.
He spray-painted one of her homes with racist epithets, torched another and dropped off an eviscerated rat at yet another. Police were called. No charges were laid.
It all ended 12 years ago when, against incredible odds, the United States granted her asylum under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
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Ars Technica
Is every pair of jeans like no other? According to the testimony of FBI forensic analysts, the patterns seen on denim are reliably unique and can be used to identify a suspect in surveillance footage.
The problem is, this technique has never been subjected to thorough scrutiny, and evidence acquired through it may not be as strong as it has been claimed to be. A paper published in PNAS puts denim-pattern analysis through its paces, finding that it isn’t particularly good at matching up identical pairs of jeans—and may create a number of “false alarm” errors to boot.
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