Medical Response to Adult Sexual Assault

Linda Ledray is the founder and director of the Minneapolis-based Sexual Assault Resource Service (SARS), one of the first SANE programs, which she developed in 1977. SARS provides competent forensic-medical services to sexual assault survivors at seven hospital sites in Hennepin County, MN. She is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota where she has taught in the School of Nursing and the Psychology Department. She has been active in humanitarian relief missions to Honduras, Thailand, and Bosnia and she has taught nationally and internationally on the topic of victim assistance, SANE-SART program development, and program evaluation. Linda Ledray was on active duty mobilized at the 2nd General Hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. She is the section editor for the Journal of Emergency Nursing, SANE section and has published many articles and books including Recovering from Rape (1994) and the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Development and Operation Guide (1999).

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Ann Burgess is an internationally recognized pioneer in the assessment and treatment of victims of trauma and abuse. She has received several honors for her work including the Sigma Theta Tau International Audrey Hepburn Award, the American Nurses’ Association Hildegard Peplau Award, and the Sigma Theta Tau International Episteme Laureate Award. Her research with victims began when she co-founded one of the first hospital-based crisis counseling programs at Boston City Hospital with Boston College sociologist, Lynda Lytle Holmstrom. Since then, she has worked with the FBI Academy special agents to study serial offenders and the links between child abuse, juvenile delinquency, and subsequent perpetration. Dr. Burgess has also studied young abuse victims and the impact of trauma on their physical and psychological development, their families, and communities. Her recent research includes studies in elder abuse in nursing homes, cyberstalking, and Internet sex crimes. She is currently a professor at the Boston College William F. Connell School of Nursing and teaches courses in victimology, forensic science, forensic mental health, case studies in forensics, and forensic science labs.

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Angelo Giardino is the medical director of Texas Children’s Health Plan, a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, and an attending physician for the Texas Children’s Hospital’s forensic pediatrics service at the Children’s Assessment Center in Houston, Texas. Angelo Giardino completed his residency and fellowship training in pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Immediately after his fellowship training, Angelo Giardino became the assistant, and then the associate, medical director at Health Partners of Philadelphia, where he had primary responsibility for utilization management, intensive case management, and health care data analysis. He also shared responsibility for the plan’s quality improvement program. Additionally, he began the Child Abuse and Neglect Team for Children with Special Health Care Needs, which was funded by a three-year grant from a local philanthropy. In 1998, he was appointed associate chair of clinical operations in the Department of Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), and in June of 1999 he was asked to chair the CHOP Quality Committee. These accomplishments are only a few of his career.

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