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Guidelines for medico-legal care for victims of sexual violence

GUIDELINES FOR MEDICO-LEGAL CARE FOR VICTIMS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Acknowledgements
The expertise and support of many people have made possible the development of these guidelines. WHO offers special thanks to David Wells, Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, Victoria, Australia, for his work as lead author, for his involvement in the peer review process, and for incorporating the recommendations arising from peer review. WHO also wishes to thank Wendy Ta ylor, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China, for her work as co-author and for her assistance during the peer review process and subsequent revising of the early drafts.

The guidelines have benefited greatly from the contributions of others: particular acknowledgement is made to Tanya Smith, Hospital for Sick Children, T oronto, Canada, for writing the material on child sexual abuse, to Marcellina Mian, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada, for reviewing the material on child sexual abuse, to Alexandra Welborn for her contribution to the adult sexual assault materials, to Joanne Peake for typing and layout of drafts and to Ann Morgan for copy-editing.

Many thanks to the following individuals for their work as reviewers: Deborah Billings, Harendra Da Silva, Antonius Herkutanto, Coco Idenburg, Miguel Lorente, Margaret Lynch, Lorna Martin, Alex Olumbe and Fernando Pinilla. Pa r ticipants in the June 2001 Consultation on the Health Sector Response to Sexual Violence were integral to the process: Abu Hassan Assari, Widney Brown, Artice Getton-Brown, Maria del Carmen Contreray, Alison Cunning- ham, Ravindra Fernando, Amal Abdel El Hadi, Rodney Hammond, Coco Idenburg, Hani Jahshan, June Lopez, Miguel Lorente, Bernie Madrid, Lorna Martin, Aida Elena Constantin Peña, Berit Schei, Margarita Quintanilla and Barbara Weibl.

This work is a collaboration between WHO’s Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention and Department of Gender and Women’s Health. Special thanks to Magdalena Cerda and Alison Phinney, Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention, World Health Organization, who authored portions of the guidelines and were responsible for overall project co-ordination. The guidance and substantive input of Dr Claudia Garcia-Moreno, Department of Gender and Women’s Health, World Health Organization, was also integral to the process.

The development and publication of these guidelines has been made possible by the generous financial support of the Governments of the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden.

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