As an exhibitor at the Fifth National SART Training Conference in Seattle, WA in May of 2009, we are providing this information to you about Crime Sciences, Inc.

Crime Sciences, Inc. provides a broad range of forensic products. They are a leader in supplying forensic light sources and training in the use of forensic light sources. Their display at the Fifth National SART Training Conference in Seattle in May of 2009 featured their Forensic Flare Nursing Kit, the forensic light source of choice of SANE programs in New Mexico and Canada.

The Forensic Flare Nursing Kit was specifically designed for use by sexual assault nurse examiners. The flare incorporates the ideal combination of high output and a narrow band light output at 470nm, ideal for detecting biological fluids, in a unique hand held design. You will never know what evidence you have been missing until you use a Flare! They also displayed their range of evidence rulers and markers including their unique 6” Gray Ruler with color scale, and their sterile disposable nail clippers with nail catcher.

For further information, Click here

Please click on this link to view an article reprinted with the permission from SATI e-News: Advocates and Law Enforcement: Oil and Water?


You are invited you to visit their website at www.mysati.com

Thank you for your patience as we moved our website to a new server in an effort to continue providing timely and pertinent information to SANEs and SART teams around the country. The move has now been completed.

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR USERS UPLOADING DATA TO THE SANE-SART DATA BASE:

We are continuing to experience a technical difficulty with the SANE data tool that allows our users to upload cases to our website. We have now determined that extensive programming will be required to make the SANE data tool operable. Unfortunately, it will require funding to accomplish this task. The SARS office has applied for a grant to facilitate this. We hope that the national database will be operational again this fall. When the SANE data tool is working properly, we will post it on the website. Thank you again for your patience.

Until then, we hope that you will catalogue your sexual assault data to enter in the national data base late this fall. If you choose to suspend entering data at this point and just resume entering new cases this fall, we certainly understand. In the mean time, you will continue to have access to the aggregate data entered up to the point when the data was transferred to the new server in May. While the date shown when you pull a report displays the current date, you will see that the total number of cases entered into the database is frozen at 8,388 cases.

If your agency has loaded over 100 sexual assault cases, your local aggregate data reports will be frozen at the total number of cases entered.

Once the SANE data tool has been reprogrammed, we hope to revise the form utilized for data entry to make the form more user-friendly as well as incorporating suggestions made as to the type of data you would like to see included.

Please notify us by e-mail if you have further suggestions for data that you collect that is not currently included on our "Client Data Sheet" and/or on the aggregate data reports. The e-mail address is admin@sartconference.com

SAFENOWPROJECT salutes President Bush and members of Congress for their unanimous support of a landmark sex offender and child protection bill!

Humphreys, MO
July 27, 2006

Today is a big day, not only for SAFENOWPROJECT, but for the protection of children and families across the country. At 1:20 EST, President Bush signed into law HR 4472, known as the "Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006", a bill viewed by many as the most comprehensive sex offender management and child safety legislation passed in decades. According to the SAFENOWPROJECT's Founder Margaret Bullens, HR 4472 is unique because "not only does it improve our nation's current sex offender registration and community notification laws, but it develops opportunities for our country to better understand the problem of sexual violence and look toward the development of new strategies and resources to hold sex predators accountable, while protecting known and potential victims and offering hope and new opportunities for proactive prevention."

The SAFENOWPROJECT is a national 501c3 nonprofit organization, incorporated in northern Missouri, that creates, promotes and advocates community-based strategies and resources to eliminate child sexual abuse. Our organization has played a significant role in providing ongoing education about the benefits, limitations and unintended consequences of the many proposed bills by members of Congress that ultimately led to the overall compilation of HR 4472.

We are happy to report that many members of Congress listened and took action based on our education and advocacy efforts that began with the development of a "Legislative Wish-list" in 2005. Along with our support of HR 4472 (which includes the national sex offender registry), we asked that Congress create a risk-based classification system to allow law enforcement and the public-at-large an opportunity to better understand the varied levels of risks posed by the 500,000+ sex offenders on the registry, and perhaps more importantly, ensure that our limited resources are focused specifically on the predatory offenders who pose the greatest threat in our communities. Congressman Paul Gillmor (OH) took the initiative to add a study to define this risk- based classification system to HR 4472, and also introduced it as a stand-alone bill "SAFE NOW ACT of 2006", otherwise referred to as HR 4815. After much debate between the Senate and House, there was unanimous support for HR 4472, along with language added by Congressman Gillmor that addresses risk classification that can be found in Section 637 of the new law.

Instead of heading to DC to attend the bill signing, SAFENOWPROJECT is headed to Kansas City, the organization's future planned headquarters, to film an educational video focused on our TAKE FIVE (TM) program which is slated to be incorporated as an upcoming module in the national Neighborhood Watch toolkit soon to be released by the National Sheriffs' Association.

For more information or to make a financial contribution to support our ongoing child safety and prevention efforts, please contact our office or visit our website.

Website: www.safeNOWproject.org

SAFENOWPROJECT
Margaret Bullens
Executive Director
email: margaret@safenowproject.org
phone: 660-673-6045

With the addition of the Rhode Island program operating out of the Women and Infants Hospital, all fifty U.S. states now have at least one operating SANE program. The Rhode Island SANE program was started by Lu Force, RN, Donna LaFontaine, MD, and Susan Duffy, MD, with significant support from the RI State Attorney General, Patrick Lynch.

The Rhode Island program began providing service in February of 2006 . They currently have 14 SANE trained nurses performing exams, and they expect to see approximately 100 victims a year.

NEW KIDS TEENS DIVISION COMES TOGETHER AT WORKING TO HALT ONLINE ABUSE

WHOA launches new Kids/Teens Division, developed to help kids stay safe on the Internet

We’re so excited to announce that kids and teens now have somewhere to go if they are being bullied, harassed, intimidated or stalked online – WHOA-KTD,” said Jayne Hitch, president of WHOA and WHOA-KTD.

“Bullying is the biggest problem online right now for kids and teens. They used to get a reprieve from bullies when they went home, on holidays and school vacation or summer vacation. Now bullies can follow them online anytime, via the Internet or their cell phones – it’s crazy. We’ll do our best to help kids and teens end the bullying before it spirals out of control.”

* According to FBI Statistics (1993) by the National Education Association, 160,000 children miss school every day due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students
* In 1999, 5% of students ages 12 through 18 reported being bullied at school in "the previous six months". Bullying is being "picked on" or made to do things they did not want to do (National Center for Educational Statistics and Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2001). Indicators of School Crime and Safety 2001).

The Sexual Assault Resource Service is pleased to introduce you to our newly redesigned Web site. Key features of the redesigned site include an expanded Topics menu, site to site interaction with a Forum for each discipline within the SART, access to aggregate data, expanded user input, an opportunity to Vote in the current poll, and a calendar of events (conferences, courses).

User Functions
If you have not already done so, please click on New User on the left of your screen to set up your sane-sart.com account. As a sane-sart.com User, you will:
--have access to all Topics sections
--have access to aggregate data compiled by SANE programs participating in our Web Team program
--be able to participate in the Forum specific to your discipline
--be able to contribute conference/course listings, link suggestions and stories for review and possible posting on this Web site

Topics
After your registration has been processed, you may access the special sections of the Web site by clicking on the Topic of your choice on the upper left of your screen.

Forum
After your registration has been processed, you may access the Forum for your discipline by scrolling to the bottom of this page and clicking on your discipline.

The Information We Collect
sane-sart.com maintains high standards for the protection of your privacy at our Web site. After your sane-sart.com account registration has been processed, your contact data will not be sold, rented or shared without your consent. Please see our Web Site Privacy Policy, available in the Topics menu.

Thu Jan 6, 5:49 PM ET

By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer

NEW YORK - Scores of advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood, assailed new Justice Department guidelines for treating rape victims Thursday because the detailed procedures make no mention of emergency contraception as an option that could spare some women an unwanted pregnancy.

The result is "a glaring omission in an otherwise thorough document," the groups said in a letter sent to Diane Stuart, director of the Justice Department's Office on Violence Against Women.

Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called the omission "a blatant example of politics taking precedence over the emotional and physical health needs of women." Her organization, and other groups, contend that information about emergency contraception was included in an early draft of the guidelines, then removed from the final version because of political concerns.

A Justice Department spokesman, Eric Holland, said Stuart's office had received the protest letter and would "review its contents carefully." The department offered no immediate comment on the specifics of the complaints.

Many major medical groups support the use of emergency contraception, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that it be offered to all sexual assault victims who are at risk of pregnancy. But many conservative groups contend that use of emergency contraception can be a form of abortion in cases where fertilization has already occurred.

More than 93,000 rapes were reported in the United States last year, according to the FBI, and many more went unreported. Estimates as to how many women became pregnant because of rapes range from 4,000 to 25,000, but advocacy groups say nearly 90 percent of such pregnancies could be prevented if victims had prompt access to emergency contraception.

Commonly known as morning-after pills, emergency contraceptives are a stronger dose of regular birth control pills. They are considered highly effective up to 72 hours after unprotected sex.

The ACLU, in a recent study of 11 states, found that many emergency care facilities do not routinely provide emergency contraception to rape victims. Results varied from lows of 6 percent of facilities in Louisiana and 8 percent in Idaho to highs of 80 percent in New Hampshire and 85 percent in New York.

Some states require hospitals to assist victims in obtaining emergency contraception; other states allow medical personal to withhold such services for reasons of conscience. The Justice Department said the new, first-of-their-kind guidelines were not intended to supersede state policies.

The step-by-step guidelines were released last fall after input from criminal justice and health experts, with the aim of ensuring that victims receive high-quality medical and forensic services.

The 130-page document includes extensive suggestions for coping with the possibility of sexually transmitted disease, but only one sentence on pregnancy prevention: "Discuss treatment options with patients, including reproductive health services."

The protest letter calls for the guidelines to be revised to specify that victims should be offered emergency contraception as routine policy.

"It is time for policy-makers to stop heartlessly ignoring the needs of sexual assault patients," said Louise Melling, director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project. "There is no excuse for not doing whatever we can to ensure that women can prevent pregnancy."

Among the 205 groups signing the letter were the American Association of University Women, Catholics for a Free Choice, the Episcopal Church USA, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Council of Jewish Women and the National Organization for Women.

The October 28 issue of The New York Times published "Tracing 'John Doe' DNA, Police Match Suspect to Old Sex Crime" an article written by Sabrina Tavernise. sane-sart.com Advisory Board member Norman Gahn, assistant district attorney with the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office, was interviewed for the article. The article references that the "John Doe" approach originated in Milwaukee in 1999 when Norm Gahn's office issued a warrant for arrest based on a DNA profile.

Click below to download a PDF of the article:
John Doe DNA Article