**5. The establishment of the "One-Step Sexual Assault Crisis Center"**

The research team of the university set up a "One-Step Sexual Assault Crisis Center" in order to improve care for victims for the first time in Turkey. This

specialist facility is organized in an interdisciplinary approach, where the victims get legal, medical, and psychological care without any additional burden to what they have experienced. The center accepts all the victims who experienced physical and sexual violence. Diagnosis-treatment stages and the medicolegal issues are carried out in a detailed and sensitive manner, within a one-stop facility and 24/7 principle. We have developed an innovative, sustainable, and expandable cooperation model with advanced technology in forensic laboratory infrastructure, based on the cooperation with different organizations that will contribute to the process with a multidisciplinary approach. We intend to develop methods and measures that can be taken to prevent violence by compiling the services to be provided by this center. Similar models have been established in the USA (Sexual Assault Response Team SART) and the UK (Sexual Assault Referral Centre SARC) and in many other countries to establish cooperation between different services for a less traumatic victim care. The main objective of these centers, as well as for our initiative, is to achieve one single application center and save victims from several visits to police, hospitals, and prosecution, the value of which is mentioned in numerous articles [18, 19, 23]. Vulnerable groups, such as children and mentally disabled people, together with all sexually assaulted or victimized citizens can apply for care. The establishment in mention is the first one in Turkey, and we hope that it can form a model for further initiatives. The main idea is to diminish the psychological revictimization of the assaulted by providing proper medical examination and evidence collection together with psychosocial care and follow-up as in several similar facilities globally [24]. This can be achieved by the coordination of professionals from different areas of expertise.

The center that has been established in Istanbul, the most overpopulated megalopolis of the country, is organized in Yeni Yüzyıl University in two interrelated sections: the main center and the hospital. They are both constructed based on one and single functioning protocol. The workload is primarily in the main center, whereas only cases that need serious medical intervention are headed to the hospital.

The first person that the victim encounters in the center and in the hospital is a specially trained forensic nurse who opens the case and organizes the rest of the visit. The steps that are followed in parallel and/or in tandem are shown as follows:

Actions that are taken regarding the victim:


Actions that are taken regarding the legal system


Actions that are taken by the laboratory

A. Receiving the collected evidence from the case manager

