The $0 Rape Kit No One Told Me Existed

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 since it takes 6 months to have HIV appear, supposedly. 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 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.

I spoke to a friend of mine about a woman named Celine. She told me briefly what happened to her. I asked if she would be comfortable talking to me. Celine told me she was also roofied and raped. But her story, while similar, felt even more sinister since she knew the asshole.

Celine went on to describe how she woke up naked in her “friend’s” house, covered in bruises and cuts, bleeding from what she says was sex she never consented to. Things she had never done. 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. 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 are not doing self-blame here. This was rape. This was not your fault.

Then came the comprehensive care. Quiet. Methodical. Almost boring if it weren’t so holy. Full body exam, forensic evidence collection 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.

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.

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. 71% of sexual assault survivors receive mental health care compared to 6% with usual care. Access to mental health services jumped from 38% to 72%. There’s been a 69% increase in police reports filed, a 41% drop in homelessness, and significant decreases in PTSD symptoms, depression, and alcohol use.

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, they passed additional legislation to define standards for TRCs across the state. Other states followed. Ohio’s attorney general announced a $2.6 million effort to launch five trauma recovery centers. Illinois included similar services in a criminal justice reform bill. New York City opened its first TRC in 2025.

The movement is growing but slowly. Too slow for the one in five women who will be assaulted in their lifetimes.

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.

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. Loudly. Publicly. Clumsily sometimes. But here I am.

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?

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 rewarded rapists with their victim’s property 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.

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.

One in five women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. And we have 55 trauma recovery centers.

Celine couldn’t pursue legal action. Her exam documented that she was battered, cut, and bleeding from violent anal sex. Celine says she never consented to that kind of sex and had never had it before in her life. No DNA was extracted. Her lawyer told her it would be a year-long battle of “he said, she said.”

So she did something else. She posted it online.

The post has been seen by thousands. Celine says the man she believes assaulted her has seen it. She told me he went to the police to file accusations against her. Because of California’s anti-SLAPP law, her lawyer explained there’s little he can do right now to legally silence her.

Celine told me multiple women commented on her post describing non-consensual experiences with him. Female friends came to his defense. “You’re destroying the reputation of a good guy.” One wrote: “I asked him if this is true, and he said no.”

Rapists are normally not the type that would respond with, “I’m gonna be honest, I raped her.”

The defenders’ comments have since been deleted by moderators. The post remains up. Celine keeps it refreshed by encouraging anonymous comments, which keeps it cycling to the top of feeds.

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.

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.”

Here’s what should shock us more: only humans do this. In other mammals, females decide when sex happens. 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 Encyclopedia of Women’s 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. It took specific cultures, especially early Christian, 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.

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 SexEd.

While Mark Zuckerberg’s $75 million donation in 2015 (7.35% of the hospital rebuild cost) 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 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.

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.

Resources:

Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, Rape Treatment Center 1001 Potrero Ave, Building 25, 1st Floor, San Francisco, CA 94110 Phone: (415) 437-3000 (ages 18 and over) Available: 24/7, Cost: Free Services: Medical exams, rape kits, emergency contraception, STI treatment, mental health care, trauma-focused therapy, case management

Child and Adolescent Support, Advocacy & Resource Center (CASARC) For youth survivors ages 6-17 Phone: (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 Sexual Assault Hotline 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) Available 24/7 Online chat: hotline.rainn.org

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