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While it is true that rape survivors are often at their most vulnerable when they first choose to come forward after the crime assuming that a survivors ability to give testimony about what happened to him or her is dependent upon the gender of the law enforcement officer conducting the interview is problematic for a number of reasons. First and foremost, not all communities are large enough to support a law enforcement agency with enough detectives on staff to ensure that one of the "correct" gender will always be available when an interview needs to be conducted; secondly, not all rapes happen between members of the opposing sexes. While male on female rape is still by far the most common version of the crime, implying that every survivor needs to be interviewed by someone of the same gender ignores those victims who have been assaulted by someone of the same gender.

In reality the gender of the interviewer is far less important than ensuring that the interviewer has the proper training, strength of character, and experience to be able to conduct and effective interview and remain sensitive to the survivor's needs. It is also essential to provide support for the survivor during the interview by allowing him or her to have friends and family present during the interview. If a community has the resources to do so, providing the survivor with an advocate who can provide emotional support, insight into the interview and exam process and additional resources is also invaluable. Most advocacy agencies have better resources for providing staff of the same gender as the survivor and this is a more reasonable expectation for support services to meet than it is for law enforcement.

I have been a volunteer victim advocate for the sexual assault crisis center in my community for more than three years now. I've had the privilege of sitting in on interviews with some amazingly strong survivors who have been through the trauma of rape and been brave enough to come forward, tough out a rather invasive medical exam and follow that up by recounting, detail by detail, the events leading up to and contributing to the assault. Every interview I have participated in has been conducted by a male detective. I can assure you, speaking from personal experience, if the interviewer is professional, courteous, sensitive and empathetic then the survivor will open up enough to talk about her experience. An insensitive interviewer, regardless of his or her gender, is going to shut a victim

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