**4. Procedures for reporting a sexual assault case in Turkey**

The person that has been sexually abused and wants to disclose it, she/he has to go either to the police or to a hospital for seeking help. In case the victim reports to the police, the police, following the history taking, have to decide to which hospital they have to be directed for evidence collection. In the meantime, the police inform the prosecutor for the event. The evidence is reexamined by the doctor in the hospital, and a second history taking forces the victim to talk about the traumatic event. The evidence collected is transferred to the "Council of Forensic Medicine" for examination and report writing. The victim on the other side is in front of the prosecutor for the last history taking being revictimized once more. Then, all the parties wait for the evidence examination report, which is generally delayed. Things get worse especially when there is a need for laboratory examinations such as DNA and illegal drugs for cases under influence. The overall process is distressing and upsetting. The reality is that this is not specific to our country because there are numerous scientific articles complaining about retraumatization and long-lasting periods for the case to be closed.

The second probable way that a victim can choose is to go directly to a hospital for medical examination and sample collection. This is actually not changing the psychological burden for the victim because the hospital has to inform the police, and all the above-mentioned steps are repeated. The victim may not be able to be examined timely, and this is also a problem for the evidence itself that it may be diminished and for the psychology of the applicant. Care seems to be lower for sexual assault victims compared to regular patients in the medical centers. Moreover, although there is a regulation on force as we mentioned above, there are no specific policies and standardized procedures for collecting sexual-assault-related samples as evidentiary material. Therefore, the hospitals are able to collect partly the evidence or sometimes lose them completely by long-lasting procedures or it is possible to contaminate or even degrade the very valuable tool that can be used for justice. However, it is obvious that the biological evidence that is collected from the victim's body serves as a tool to aid the police investigation in a sexual assault case. This kind of evidence can identify the perpetrator(s), give an idea of the time of the assault, point to the presence of violence if any, and can state whether the assault was drug facilitated [21, 22].

Both law enforcement officers and healthcare professionals complain about the inadequate services in rape cases. Commonly, the care that is provided to rape victims is lower than other patients. Additionally, there is no attention paid to the psychological trauma of an assaulted person in the emergency departments. On the other hand, the doctors and the rest of the healthcare professionals are not adequately trained to tackle these sorts of cases. They are not familiar with the ways of forensic examination, history taking, and evidence collection. Proper documentation is another serious issue, and if it is improper, even the collected evidence loses value. Moreover, often the doctors themselves beware to undertake rape cases, and they transfer the victims to other doctors or sometimes even to different hospitals.
