The Rape Victim in the Emergency Ward

Editor's note: This article, from the October 1973 issue of AJN, details Ann Burgess and Lynda Lytle Holmstrom's research interviewing rape victims and establishing one of the first crisis counseling programs in the country. Groundbreaking at the time, it drew the attention of the FBI. As Burgess recently told AJN (see Conversations), Roy Hazelwood from the Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, was tasked with developing a curriculum for teaching rape investigation. At the end of one lecture, he asked if anyone knew anything about rape. A detective, who was also a nurse, told him she had recently read an article about rape in AJN. It was this article, and what followed, that led to Burgess teaching FBI investigators how to interview rape victims and eventually providing the methodology that served as the basis for profiling serial offenders.