Our Vision

Our vision is that every individual is empowered to take control of their health and wellbeing in the aftermath of violence.

Our Mission

Our mission is to lessen the impact of violence in the District of Columbia. We do this by:

• Performing trauma-informed medical forensic examinations;

• Providing high quality evidence collection;

• Ensuring referral of follow-up services;

• Sharing information and results with patients;

• Increasing the utilization of evidence in regulatory, civil and criminal justice systems; and

• Promoting knowledge and understanding among medical providers and the community about medical forensic care.

A History of DCFNE

The original DC Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Program was a private partnership between the DC Rape Crisis Center and DC General Hospital. When the DC General Hospital closed, Howard University Hospital (HUH) agreed to host the program. The DC Rape Crisis Center hired a SANE Director and then reimbursed HUH for the cost of exams and the time of the on-call forensic nurses who were employees of HUH.

In the spring of 2008, the renewal negotiations for the contract with Howard failed and the program was slated to close. At the same time, the federal Office on Violence Against Women required all states and territories that receive Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) funding to certify that a survivor of sexual assault could get a forensic exam without any requirement to participate in the criminal justice process or cooperate with law enforcement, and the exam had to be free of charge to the patient. If this certification were not met, then the District would lose federal victim services funding. Because it is the responsibility of the DC Office of Victim Services to be the certifying body to the new VAWA requirements, the OVS adopted a central role in developing and overseeing the SANE Program.

The current DC SANE program was launched in October 2008 as a partnership between the Office of Victim Services, which funded and administered the program, and MedStar Washington Hospital Center (MWHC), where medical forensic exams were conducted. All SANEs were independently contracted through OVS, and OVS reimbursed MWHC directly for the costs associated with exams conducted at MWHC.

While the Office of Victim Services was extremely committed and supportive of the program, the office was not designed to provide efficient program administration or to support expansion of the program. In 2013, the decision was made to incorporate the SANE program as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and District of Columbia Forensic Nurse Examiners (DCFNE) was born on February 13, 2013.