The $0 Rape Kit No One Told Me Existed | Good Kitty Co

For everyone who showered, stayed quiet, and thought they had to handle it alone.

(Content note: sexual assault, rape, medical care, systems that fail and systems that help. Names and some identifying details have been changed.)

This week, a lawsuit put the words "Cornell 7" in every feed. A student alleges she was gang-raped at a fraternity, prosecutors have reopened the investigation, and the comment sections are doing what comment sections do. The case will play out in court. The shame is already playing out everywhere else, and I know that part by heart.

It took me almost eight years to say the word out loud.

I preferred my husband at the time to think I got drunk and passed out at a friend's house. That version made me irresponsible and sloppy, not horrifically violated. One drink. Eight hours gone. Good old-fashioned roofies.

When I first woke up, I thought I was in my own bedroom. Memory is loyal like that. I rolled out of bed, half-asleep, and walked to what I was sure was my bathroom. Nope, not the bathroom. It was a closet. And not mine. It didn't register at that moment when I lifted the toilet lid that wasn't a toilet lid, used his laundry hamper like porcelain royalty, then crawled right back into bed. Like this was just another Tuesday.

Reality set in around six a.m. when my phone lit up like an Amber Alert broadcast: 103 missed calls from my husband. Forty-eight from friends. A toddler at home who had no idea why mom didn't come back from a birthday party where she had exactly one beer.

One fucking beer. And I hadn't even been given a microphone that evening.

I sprinted straight into silence. Showering. I washed every inch of my body like I could scrub the story into something else. I threw away my clothes. I chose the explanation that made everyone the most comfortable. I kept the truth all to myself. Played the "I passed out on the sofa" tape.

Denial is an incredible filing system. You take "rape" and file it under "oops."

I went alone for all the smattering of gross testing. Six months of fluorescent lighting and paper gowns, because that's how long I was told HIV could take to show up. No rape kit. No report. No therapist. No warm blanket. No one saying "this was not your fault" on loop until my nervous system finally believed it.

I chose the version where I was the bad guy. It felt easier than the version where I had been drugged and raped. You can scold a sloppy girl. You can still sleep with her. Be married to her. She's still kinda tidy.

I'd learned that version young. In high school, I got drunk at a party and my boyfriend's twin brother took advantage of me. I don't remember any of it. What I remember is the next day.

SLUT.

I was shunned by everyone. My boyfriend broke up with me. Without needing to say as much. Just whispers, isolation and radio silence. His brother went on with his life.

Nobody asked what happened to me. They had already decided. So years later, waking up in a stranger's closet, I skipped straight to the verdict I'd been handed in high school and handed it to myself.

I found out recently that other women have their own stories about him. Fuck that guy.

I didn't tell my husband until our divorce. Turning forty made me allergic to hiding. Owning my failures and taking no prisoners. I started collecting these nuggets like crystals for display. And it felt good. What's wild is I don't really think about that night much. I pushed it right out of my mind. Poof! Never to think of it again after I passed all my STI tests. I'm assuming it's easier I don't remember anything. Just blank. I can talk about it now without emotion, which sometimes scares me, like I splintered that piece off inside my brain.

What happens when you walk into a rape treatment center?

I spoke to a friend of mine about a woman named Celine. She told me briefly what happened to her. I asked if Celine would be comfortable talking to me. And she was.

Celine told me she was also roofied and raped. But her story, while similar, felt even more sinister since she knew the man.

Celine went on to describe how she woke up naked in her "friend's" house, covered in bruises and cuts, bleeding. Things had been done to her she had never consented to. Not with anyone. Not even her husband.

A fucking doctor, she told me. Someone she trusted. Someone with access to the drugs that could have erased her memory. A man who took a "do no harm" oath and, in Celine's telling, behaved like it only applied when it was convenient.

Like me, her brain tried to bargain. Maybe I drank too much. Maybe I wanted this. Maybe I cheated. Our brains are loyal that way. They just choose the wrong team sometimes.

And then Celine did what I didn't even know existed as an option. First, she told her husband. He's the one (love this man) who found the RAINN hotline for her. She went to the only place in San Francisco that treats sexual assault like the medical emergency it is: the Rape Treatment Center at Zuckerberg San Francisco General.

She walked in and said, "I was sexually assaulted."

They gave her a room. They asked whether she wanted only women in the room, and then honored it. They gave her heated blankets and snacks. (Snacks are good since you're not really thinking about eating when your brain can't seem to settle.) A trauma therapist came and sat with her and said the thing her body could not say yet: We're not doing self-blame here. This was rape. This was not your fault.

Then came the comprehensive care. Soft yet methodical. Almost boring if it weren't so holy. Full body exam, forensic evidence collection (only if she wanted it), pregnancy testing, immediate HIV and STI prophylaxis, photos documented by medical staff, a therapist trained in trauma and EMDR, language to give her workplace, a number to call at three in the morning when the shame spiral hits.

She stayed five hours. They told her she could stay as long as she wanted.

Cost to Celine: zero dollars.

Cost if she hadn't gone: choose your own apocalypse.

They put her into fully paid EMDR therapy through summer 2026. Gave her a 24/7 hotline. Gave her documentation, photographs taken by registered nurses, and certificates stating she was sexually assaulted. Evidence. Proof. The kind that makes "are you sure" sound as stupid as it actually is.

When Celine whispered, "but it was my fault," they immediately stopped her. Not on their watch. This is not your fault. This is not your fault. This is not your fault, on repeat.

Self-blaming is strong and so deeply ingrained. Having a community of women actively counter it while your body is still shaking changes the neurological pathway. That interruption rewires something. It literally saves lives.

It's not just personal psychology. This self-blame has been taught into us for centuries. Barbara Walker writes about how early Christian fathers framed women as defective men and sex itself as a kind of contamination event. If your body is taught to be the problem, then anything done to it must also be your fault. By the time a woman is sitting on an ER table in a paper gown, the verdict is already waiting in her nervous system: you did this.

TRC interrupts that script on purpose. They replace "this was your fault" with "we believe you" and build care around that truth.

What is a Trauma Recovery Center?

This is not a luxury spa. There is no cucumber water. No eucalyptus steam room named Serenity. It's the Trauma Recovery Center, built as a pilot model by psychologist Dr. Alicia Boccellari in 2001 for people who survive violence. Dr. Boccellari basically looked at the crap system and said, "We're failing survivors."

Dr. Boccellari was a Clinical Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at UCSF and Chief Psychologist at San Francisco General Hospital when she started with a small state grant and a radical idea: survivors of violent crime, especially sexual assault, were falling through the cracks of traditional victim services. They needed more than a rape kit and a phone number to call. They needed wraparound care. They needed someone to meet them where they were, not expect them to navigate a labyrinth of systems while their world was imploding.

The model she built combined three essential elements: assertive outreach (we come to you), trauma-informed mental health services (evidence-based care from people who understand), and comprehensive case management (help with rent, food, safety, legal advocacy, the practical needs that become mental health issues). They don't expect women with shattered nervous systems to fill out ten different forms in ten different offices while their bodies feel like crime scenes. A radical idea, apparently.

Over time, that small pilot turned into an ecosystem. The Rape Treatment Center. CASARC for kids and teens. Survivors International for torture survivors and refugees. The Neurotrauma Outreach Program for traumatic brain injury patients.

How many Trauma Recovery Centers are there?

What started as one center in San Francisco has become a national model. As of 2025, there are 55 Trauma Recovery Centers across 15 states, including Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

The data is staggering and embarrassingly obvious once you hear it. With the TRC model, 71% of sexual assault survivors receive mental health care, compared to 6% with usual care. Survivors see a 44% decrease in PTSD symptoms and a 43% decrease in depression symptoms. And the model costs 34% less than traditional fee-for-service mental health care.

Dr. Boccellari, now Professor Emeritus and Senior Director of the National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers, literally wrote the manual for transforming services for survivors of violent crime. In 2017, she released a free trauma recovery center manual to share the model with programs around the country.

California passed legislation in 2013 to begin replicating the TRC model. In 2017, it codified standards for TRCs across the state. Other states followed. In 2017, Ohio's attorney general announced $2.6 million to launch trauma recovery centers. Illinois included similar services in a criminal justice reform bill. New York City has since funded New York State's first TRCs.

The movement is growing but slowly. Too slow for the one in five women in the U.S. who have experienced completed or attempted rape.

In real life, the TRC model means women like Celine get held, medically, emotionally, and legally, instead of falling into the crack labeled "figure it out." Or worse, made to believe their assault didn't happen.

Meanwhile, I was in a bathroom somewhere years earlier, trying not to cry into a paper gown and pretending my life made sense.

Two timelines. Same story. Different outcomes.

The difference wasn't strength or courage or even resilience. It was the infrastructure in place. The difference was Dr. Boccellari deciding in 2001 that survivors deserved better and then building the thing that didn't exist.

Everyone deserves a Lydia

I recently watched Sorry, Baby. I loved this quiet film. Something terrible happens to Agnes and everyone else just keeps living. They graduate. They date. They hit career milestones. Agnes realizes she is stuck in the wreckage of something she can't outrun. The film uses a non-linear structure to show how recovery feels in real life: fragmented. Dark humor blended with profound empathy. The ordinariness of life continues while you are still metaphorically hemorrhaging.

Agnes has a best friend named Lydia. She's her ride or die. Lydia is even briefly on board with some murder, then ends up making hot dogs to keep up Agnes' charade for the neighbor instead. Lydia does not run or blink when Agnes' pain shows up. She holds the awkward and the awful carefully, honestly. Sometimes with humor, which I deeply understand as a survival tool. Everyone deserves a Lydia.

Celine had Lucy, the friend who said with actual clarity, "This was rape," when Celine's brain was still rearranging itself to make it all make sense.

I didn't think to tell anyone. I'm so used to pushing through on my own. Not the best tactic. So I am trying to become a Lydia and also let myself ask for help. I'm a loud, intense person.  Clumsily sometimes. An acquired taste. But I keep my messy shit contained. But here I am learning to become vulnerable at the ripe age of 48.

In the film, the doctor in the emergency room is unknowingly aggressive. He asks all the right questions in a shit way. This feels typical of what most of us experience.

But what if it didn't have to be that way? What if every emergency room had the protocols that Dr. Alicia Boccellari has implemented? What if every sexual assault survivor were met with heated blankets and the words "this isn't your fault" instead of clinical detachment and barely concealed judgment?

The silencing is the same system

Here is what pisses me off. We live in a country where I can build a women's urinary health company with a doctor, sell doctor-formulated UTI prevention supplements, and get censored by Meta for "adult content."

We've evolved from medieval laws that treated rape as a crime against a woman's father or husband to modern algorithms that censor the word "UTI." The mechanisms change. The silencing doesn't.

Our customer acquisition costs are six times higher than they should be because we say "UTI" or talk about female anatomy. And yes, I acknowledge Zuck's name is on the hospital that houses this renowned trauma center. He is still on my shit list for censoring women's health. Realistically, it's his wife doing the heavy lifting in this health equity arena.

The systematic silencing of women's health, from reproductive care to urinary health to sexual assault, is down to our fucking system.

When I heard about the care Celine received, I felt two things simultaneously: profound relief that this place exists, and burning rage that it took until 2001 for someone to create it. That it's still the only place in San Francisco where you can get a rape kit and comprehensive sexual assault care. That there are only 55 centers across 15 states in a country of 330 million people.

Women make up half the population and we birth all of them. One in five women is raped. And we have only 55 trauma recovery centers.

Celine couldn't pursue legal action. No DNA was extracted, and her lawyer told her it would be a year-long battle of "he said, she said."

So she did something else. She spoke publicly about what happened to her, and other women responded with experiences of their own. Some from the same guy.

What I truly love about the Trauma Recovery Center is that they interrupt the script in real time. When a survivor starts to spiral into "It was my fault, I shouldn't have," they stop her. We aren't doing that here.

No one demands heroism. A police report isn't required. Your access to care is not dependent on your courage.

They return the body to the person it belongs to. Give survivors language and a voice. You're a human before being a witness.

In my house, rape is a bagel topic

At home, I am proud of the family I have made.

My son talks about sex with me. So does my daughter. Even better, they both live inside their own skin and it fully belongs to them. I raised my daughter in a harsher contrast to how women are expected to behave. Praise for her brain, her thought process, and tenacity. Not her prettiness or her fucking size.

Ice cream is not the enemy. Sex is good. Vulnerability and acceptance are the only ways through. I show up by being honest. I allow my children ownership of their mind and bodies. And funny, my method is pretty damn good. They are thoughtful, respectful and actually care. They are not shamed for being curious, or trying something that might be considered bad. But you know what? They're responsible and make damn good choices. They can navigate life. We aren't shooting for failure to thrive.

We talk about the embarrassing stuff. It might not be fireside chats altogether, but more one-on-one time. I don't do the "how's school? fine" bullshit. I get the real goods without even prying. Ok, maybe a little push sometimes.

In this house, rape is a bagel topic. You should be able to say "Something bad happened, or I need an STI test" with the same lack of shame as "Can you pass the cream cheese." None of this is trivial. Safety should never depend on how much humiliation you are willing to swallow.

We as women apologize for so much. We hide traumas. We bend. I don't want that, especially for my daughter, because while the world is pretty fantastic, it can be brutal. So why would I want her ever to feel like she wasn't enough or terrified of taking ownership of her body, her mind, her well-being?

Bad things will sometimes happen. But my god, I hope they don't. I'm not scared or embarrassed by much anymore. And I think my kids see that.

Looking at the clothes you were wearing during anything traumatic can be triggering. Clothes are also damning by others. That skirt was "asking for it." Your shoes walked you to your assault. You feel like a failure. Your assailant can turn into everyone around you. He is suddenly in all faces and all crowds. And really, he doesn't care that it's affecting you.

These are the thoughts that cycle through a survivor's mind. The 24/7 therapist hotline at the Trauma Recovery Center is lifesaving. Because at two in the morning, when you're spiraling with overwhelming self-blame, when you need someone to remind you this was not your fault, you can call. And someone answers.

It still shocks me that someone can be a doctor, a literal "do no harm" badge-wearing professional, and also be the person who violates someone so profoundly.

It shocks me less that women are often the ones blamed for it. Our culture is obsessed with what we wore, what we drank, what we said, whether we smiled, flirted, or said the right kind of no. Did they even want to hear? Meanwhile, men get to shrug and say things like: "She seemed into it."

We call rapists "animals," but that's backwards. Animals don't create laws, religions, and platforms designed to excuse violence. Only humans do that.

Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets talks about this bluntly: the modern idea of the rapist as some uncontrollable "beast" is backwards. Walker points out that the idea of sex as dirty and women as lesser wasn't universal. In her account, it took specific cultures, especially early Christian and Anglo-Saxon ones, to turn rape into an enforcement tool and call it morality. Early Christian fathers obsessed over female sin, female bodies, female "temptation," and then withheld basic sexual knowledge from everyone. If your moral hall monitors teach you that sex is filthy and women are dangerous, of course you grow a society that's bad at consent and excellent at blame. (The wellness industry has its own version of this story.)

A healthy society needs the opposite: open, accurate sexual information and the radical notion that women are fully human. That's the actual foundation. Sex is just a deeper form of communication in relationships. This should be taught in sex ed, and most of us are still learning it as adults.

The women who built the sanctuary

While Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's $75 million donation in 2015 helped rename the hospital, it's important to note that the driving force behind health equity initiatives has been Priscilla Chan. Through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, she has focused intensely on community health, believing that everyone deserves access to quality care regardless of their ability to pay, immigration status, or insurance coverage.

The hospital's mission, that everyone is welcome here no matter what, aligns perfectly with Dr. Boccellari's vision for the Trauma Recovery Center. Together, these women have created something revolutionary: a place where the most vulnerable, the most traumatized, the most systematically failed members of our society can walk in and be held safe.

The National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers, now led by Dr. Boccellari as Senior Director, provides technical assistance, training, and implementation support to established and new trauma recovery centers across the country. Their vision: a world where every survivor of violence gets the help they need to heal.

We're not there yet. Not even close. But the model works. The data proves it. And more centers are opening every year.

If you were raped

If something like this has happened to you, whether yesterday or twenty years ago, and your first instinct is to minimize it, make jokes, call it messy, I want you to know something. Your brain is trying to keep you alive. That doesn't mean something bad didn't happen.

You are allowed to take seven hours, seven days, or seventy years to name it.

You are allowed to walk into a clinic and say "this happened" even if you don't want a lawsuit, a kit, or a report.

You are allowed to want only a warm blanket, a pill for the nightmares, and someone gently repeating: This wasn't your fault.

You're not stronger for doing it alone. You are just alone.

Here is what I didn't know in 2009. Under federal law, a sexual assault forensic exam is free in every state, and you don't have to report to the police to get one. If it just happened, go as soon as you can: medication to prevent HIV has to be started within 72 hours, and emergency contraception works best the sooner you take it. Showering doesn't disqualify you from care.

If I had known the Trauma Recovery Center had existed in 2008 when I was assaulted, would I have gone?

I honestly don't know. The shame was so profound. My only desire was to make it not real. The impulse to shower away the evidence, to pretend it never happened, to protect my marriage by lying, all of it was so deeply ingrained.

But maybe if I'd known that there was a place where women would wrap me in heated blankets, where they'd stop me every time I tried to blame myself, where they'd give me a therapist and a hotline and documentation and care for an entire year at zero cost, where they'd meet me wherever I was emotionally and physically...

Maybe I wouldn't have waited all those years to say it out loud. And that's the fucking point, isn't it? None of us should have to do it alone.

There are Trauma Recovery Centers. There are hotlines with Lydias and nurses with iPhones documenting injuries, so the world has to take them seriously. Something terrible may have happened. Life doesn't simply go on. We get to rebuild it, ideally with free EMDR, good therapists, better friends, and a lot less silence.

This article is dedicated to every survivor who carried it alone, who showered away evidence, who waited years to speak. And to Dr. Alicia Boccellari, who built the sanctuary we needed.

And to Celine, who raised her hand and spoke up. You're a fucking badass.

Where to get help

RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline. 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), available 24/7. Online chat at hotline.rainn.org. They can connect you with the nearest sexual assault care in your area.

Rape Treatment Center, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. 1001 Potrero Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110. Medical care available 24/7, free. Medical exams, forensic evidence collection (no police report required), emergency contraception, STI and HIV prevention and treatment, and connection to mental health care.

UCSF Trauma Recovery Center (ages 18 and over). (415) 437-3000. Trauma-focused therapy and case management for survivors of violent crime.

CASARC (Child and Adolescent Support, Advocacy & Resource Center). For children and teens under 18. (628) 206-8386.

San Francisco Women Against Rape (SFWAR). 24/7 crisis hotline: (415) 647-RAPE (7273). Founded in 1973 by sexual assault survivors committed to anti-racist feminist principles.

National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers. nationalallianceoftraumarecoverycenters.org. Find a center near you, learn about the TRC model, and support expansion efforts.

This essay first appeared on Perfectly Unsuitable, Meghan's Substack.