By KATHARINE WEBSTER, InDepthNH.org
For three years, based on her personal experience of an attempted sexual assault by a co-worker at a party, Rep. Ellen Read, D-Newmarket, has been trying to get a bill passed that would require health care providers, law enforcement and other responders to inform sexual assault victims of their right to obtain medical evidence.
The day after the attempted assault, Read said in a hearing last month on House Bill 1633, she went to a hospital emergency room and asked to be tested for the presence of so-called “date rape drugs” because she had passed out before the man assaulted her in the bathroom, she said in a hearing last month.
But the ER doctor told Read, “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do. We don’t have access to those tests,” she said. He refused her request for a rape kit or blood and urine tests, but he did test her for cocaine and methamphetamine, which she found “insulting,” she testified at the hearing on Jan. 16 (around 2:22 p.m.).
“All this bill is saying is that if someone comes in and says they were sexually assaulted, they get handed a little card saying, ‘These are your rights,’” she said in an interview Friday morning before the Feb. 6 hearing.
HB 1633 also clarifies the definition of sexual assault to include non-penetrative assaults and the administration of date rape drugs as part of an attempt to sexually assault or rape someone.
Friday morning, HB 1633 was unanimously voted “ought to pass” by the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee and placed on the consent calendar.
Previously, Read’s fellow Democrats had opposed the bill while Republicans had supported it, but on Friday, Rep. Linda Harriott-Gathright, D-Nashua, made a motion for reconsideration.
“After doing some checking and talking to stakeholders, I realized that we were missing some information, and I did get the information and I’m very much supportive of the bill at this point,” Harriott-Gathright said.
Read said that, behind that brief statement was a long campaign of opposition to the bill by the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. She said the coalition has also opposed other bills she and other representatives on both sides of the aisle have sponsored that would strengthen the rights of sexual assault victims.
Those include her 2024 bill to allow victims of domestic violence who have reported the abuse or sought a restraining order to end rental leases early to escape their abusers, Read said, as well as other bills that would have allowed victims to buy their own, over-the-counter rape kits and seek restraining orders online.
The New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence responded in a statement Friday afternoon that it had “raised significant, good-faith concerns about legislation that Rep. Ellen Read drafted without input from medical professionals, law enforcement, prosecutors and other experts in the field.
“If passed, the bills as written would have created serious, unintended consequences that could have harmed survivors rather than protected them,” the statement said.
The coalition also accused Read of retaliating for its past, good faith opposition to her bills by teaming up with a “conspiracy theorist” from California on another bill aimed at silencing the coalition’s advocacy for victims.
That accusation involves House Bill 1675, which would establish a legislative commission to investigate the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence’s finances and alleged conflicts of interest. It would also limit the coalition to providing direct services to survivors of rape, sexual assault, domestic violence and stalking.
The coalition currently receives state funding to train police and sexual evidence collection nurses, as well as to manage the state’s sex offender registry, Read said. She would like to see that funding go to the State Office of Victim/Witness Assistance instead, to provide for greater public accountability.
Also Friday morning, the coalition sent out an action alert to its supporters asking them to oppose HB 1675, calling it a politically motivated attack that is part of an “escalating campaign to target, intimidate, and undermine an organization dedicated to protecting victims. Calling this anything other than an abuse of power ignores reality.”
The coalition did not name the alleged “conspiracy theorist,” but said that person has, over the past six years, “waged a relentless effort to harass the coalition and our staff.”
“This is a retaliatory effort, and we are aware that the New Hampshire Legislature can see right through that,” the coalition’s statement said.
Read denied that HB 1675, which will get a hearing next Wednesday before the House Executive Departments and Administration Committee, was triggered by anything other than her own concerns.
“The reason I put it forward is that I saw them (the coalition) running at bills they should be fully supporting, killing bills they should be fully supporting,” she said Friday.
“First Democrats, then Republicans, as well, had shared their stories with me about the coalition … not just quietly killing bills, but violating their mission,” she said. “Why are we paying an organization to do exactly the opposite of the thing we’re paying them to do?”