A new program aimed at providing 24-hour care for victims of sexual assault got a trial run early Monday, when a Phoenix woman was attacked in her home.

The 21-year-old woman was asleep with her two young children at about 1:40 a.m., when a man crawled through the window of her apartment and tried to sexually assault her, said Phoenix Police Chief Bob Kershaw.

The woman confronted the man, who jumped back out through the window and fled into the dark, Kershaw said. She called police, who were on scene within a few minutes.

Once there, however, officers put into action a program that won’t formally start until May.

As they sent the shaken but unhurt woman to Rogue Valley Medical Center, officers activated a response team headed by a registered nurse specially trained to evaluate victims of sexual assault.

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Instead of a traditional grilling by police, the woman was examined, interviewed and comforted by a member of the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner — or SANE — program, which organizers believe will alter the treatment of victims and the prosecution of criminals in Jackson County.

"They’re here, they’re in place, they’re working," said Kershaw. "It’s going to make our job a lot easier."

By next month, some 14 trained and certified SANE nurses are expected to begin providing 24-hour, on-call care for local victims, said coordinator Susan Moen.

They’ll serve area hospitals and clinics, the Southern Oregon University student health center and the Children’s Advocacy Center of Medford.

Accompanied by advocates from Community Works of Medford, the nurses will be the first to gather evidence, offer guidance and, they hope, help victims begin to heal.

"Victims deserve to be cared for in a professional, consistent manner," said Judy Ferris, 54, a SANE-certified nurse who works in the RVMC emergency room. "That’s what we’re trying to do."

Under the program, victims will no longer wait for hours in a public emergency room, unable to eat, drink or use the bathroom.

They’ll be examined gently by nurses trained to preserve delicate physical evidence.

They’ll be questioned carefully by staff attuned to the psychological traumas peculiar to sexual assault.

It’s an extraordinary step forward for the region and for Oregon, where a 2002 Attorney General’s study estimated that only one in every 10 sexual assaults is ever reported to police, Moen said.

That’s about one-third the national reporting average, she noted.

"The main issue here is that people who come forward are scared of what’s going to happen," said Moen, 40, who was a victims’ advocate in Los Angeles.

Secrecy, shame and blame still surround sexual assault, so much so that many victims choose not to prosecute crimes rather than confront legal hurdles and social stigma.

"They do a lot of self-blaming," Ferris said. "They think, ‘I shouldn’t have been there,’ ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’"

That attitude means many attackers are never held accountable, leaving them free to move on to other victims, Moen said.

"Your run-of-the-mill rapist, not necessarily a pedophile, has eight to 12 victims," she said.

Consequently, Moen figures rapes and other sexual crimes are vastly underreported in Jackson County and elsewhere in Oregon.

In 2003, the latest figures available, there were 79 forcible rapes reported in Jackson County and 368 other sex crimes, according to Jeff Bock, manager of the Oregon Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

Moen cites figures that show those figures included 219 sexual assaults. Of those, only 11 went to trial or resulted in pleas, she said.

Part of the goal of the SANE program is to increase reports and convictions.

Several states have had flourishing SANE programs since the late 1970s. Regions that have added programs have seen reports increase by as much as 200 percent and convictions skyrocket, fueled by the careful evidence gathered by the SANE nurses, Moen said.

Many of those states fund SANE programs. Cash-strapped Oregon, however, does not.

Moen and others have been working to raise the estimated $120,000 a year they’ll need to pay for training, staffing and other services.

So far, they’ve raised about $45,000. That will get the program off the ground, but they’ll need more. Even at $3.50 an hour for on-call wages, the nurses have to be paid, Moen said.

Raising awareness seems to be the biggest obstacle, she said. She compares public knowledge of sexual assault issues now to domestic violence a decade ago.

"People want to say, ‘It doesn’t happen here,’ " she said.

Unfortunately, she added, it does.

For more information about the SANE program, contact Moen at 201-0678 or by e-mail at silverwinglodge@charter.net.

Reach reporter JoNel Aleccia at 776-4465, or e-mail jaleccia@mailtribune.com

Police seek abuse suspect

The woman, who was sleeping with her two children under age 6, described the man as in his late teens or early 20s, 5-foot-9 to 6-feet tall, between 180 and 200 pounds.

He climbed through a window of the woman’s apartment, which is near Phoenix High School. The woman had inserted a wooden dowel in the window to secure it, but the dowel was short enough to allow the man to open the window and wiggle through, Police Chief Bob Kershaw said.

The woman and her children were not physically harmed, he said.

A Medford Police Department canine unit responded to the scene but the dog was unable to track the intruder because rain obscured his scent. Anyone with information about the incident should contact Phoenix police at 535-1113.