Standing Up For Rape Victims

Sexual assault happens every day in Honolulu, and when it does the Sex Abuse Treatment Center is there with medical care as well as legal and emotional support

Wednesday - April 05, 2006
By Alice Keesing
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Adriana Ramelli with SATC posters

Thirty years ago, women who were raped were taken to the city morgue for a forensic medical exam.

Right, the city morgue.

Adriana Ramelli shudders at the thought.

“Can you imagine:You’ve just been victimized and you have to go to the city morgue - that’s horrible,” says Ramelli, who heads up Hawaii’s Sex Abuse Treatment Center.

It was that rather ghoulish practice that prompted a group of Kapiolani Hospital doctors and community leaders to create the Sex Abuse Treatment Center 30 years ago. Visits to the morgue have since been replaced with a full suite of services that give victims a safe haven in a time of need.

Ramelli: Half of all sexual assaults are
not reported to police

Still, even these days, it’s a challenge to stop people sweeping sexual violence under the rug.

“I think the greatest challenge is trying to help the community understand that this is a very serious problem, and that it can impact your daughter, your wife, your sister, your mother, your brother,” Ramelli says.

Consider these statistics: One out of seven adult women in Hawaii has been the victim of some forcible rape sometime in her lifetime.

One out of five students will experience some form of sexual harassment in their school years.

And more than 50 percent of all sexual assaults are not reported to the police. Because of this, even the experts don’t have a real grasp on the extent of the problem.

That last statistic is one of the saddest to Ramelli because it means that many people are just suffering in silence.

“And this is probably the cruelest form of crime,” Ramelli says. “One of the things about sexual assault that most victims can identify with is it not only takes their bodies, it takes their soul.”

And the shockwaves can continue for years after the attack with feelings of intense fear and isolation to thoughts of suicide to problems with relationships or substance abuse.

The nationally recognized SATC aims to help

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