Hospitals, workers, volunteers honor survivors of sexual assault

A cold, blustery, rainy day couldn’t day stop Quad Cities medical workers and volunteers from honoring victims of sexual assault in the region. Those victims were honored Tuesday morning, April 2, during brief flag-placing ceremonies outside of UnityPoint Health-Trinity Rock Island and Unity-Point-Trinity Bettendorf hospitals. A group of about a dozen volunteers placed 148 small […]

A cold, blustery, rainy day couldn’t day stop Quad Cities medical workers and volunteers from honoring victims of sexual assault in the region. Those victims were honored Tuesday morning, April 2, during brief flag-placing ceremonies outside of UnityPoint Health-Trinity Rock Island and Unity-Point-Trinity Bettendorf hospitals. A group of about a dozen volunteers placed 148 small blue flags – 119 near the Rock Island facility and 29 flags near the Bettendorf facility – to honor and represent the sexual assault survivors who sought help and treatment at UnityPoint Health last year.

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“We want to show we’re here for them. We’re here to take care of them. …  We want our community to know we have the resources,” said Jennifer Green, the sexual assault coordinator at UnityPoint Health-Trinity, who led the flag-placing efforts outside the Rock Island hospital. Ms. Green, members of UnityPoint Health Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) and community volunteers also placed the flags in observance of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. UnityPoint Health has specially trained SANE medical professionals to help sexual assault survivors through trauma-informed care practices at the emergency department. UnityPoint Health – Trinity is the only hospital with SANE nurses on staff to care and treat sexual assault patients in the Illinois Quad Cities and support survivors from communities up to 50 miles away. SANE nurses provide 24/7 coverage at the Quad Cities hospitals. Some of the services provided by SANE nurses include: emotional support; physical examination and wellness check; collection of medical-forensic evidence; assistance with reporting the crime to police when requested; assistance with concerns about sexually transmitted infections; assistance with safety planning; and developing a medical follow-up plan. The day’s ceremonies were important because they helped recognize that sexual assault affects more than 433,000 people in the United States every year; that equates to one in 6 women and one in 33 men. For survivors, sexual assault can have long-term psychological, emotional and physical effects, according to information from UnityPoint-Trinity. One of the flag volunteers in Rock Island was Dan Sterner, director of emergency services at UnityPoint-Trinity. He said his involvement was a way to honor the courage of sexual assault victims to come forward and seek help. “We don’t hear about sexual assault victims a lot. … It’s important to recognize them because of the courage they show,” he added. Mr. Sterner and other volunteers said they were happy to take part in Tuesday’s events, even though the day was marked by miserable weather. The day’s events featured the volunteers placing most of the small flags in the roadway median near the front entrance to the Rock Island hospital. The volunteers worked fast because of the cold, windy and rainy conditions that later turned into a snowy day in the region.