Blunt seeks $4 million to fund help under new sexual assault bill

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) -- Gov. Matt Blunt said Wednesday that he will ask the Legislature for about $4 million to fund rape exams that had been billed to women or their health insurers until Missouri recently changed its law.

Blunt signed a bill in July that aimed to improve protection for victims of domestic and sexual abuse and make it easier for them to report the crime.

Among its measures, the new law prohibits health care providers from charging victims of sex crimes for a forensic exam to collect evidence. The exams and a so-called rape kit, which are used to collect and analyze evidence, cost about $1,100.

The state already covered the cost of exams for sex crime victims if the person's health insurance did not cover it. But the state Department of Health and Senior Services had said some people may have still received bills under the old law, if the hospital or medical provider was unaware of the state fund.

The new legislation requires the state to cover all such exam costs, rather than first billing private insurance programs.

Blunt said Wednesday he would ask for $1.8 million for the remaining months of the current state fiscal year, which ends July 30, and an additional $2.3 million for the following year in his budget proposals.

"It's hard to believe, but it's actually true that under previous law, victims of sexual assaults were often forced to pay for their own forensic exams to investigate the crime they suffered," Blunt said at a news conference at St. John's Hospital in the governor's hometown.

"This added terrible insult to a brutal injury," Blunt said, appearing with the bill's sponsors, Senate President Pro Tem Michael Gibbons, R-Kirkwood, and Rep. Connie Johnson, D-St. Louis.

Victim advocates welcomed the measures when they were signed into law. Besides paying for the rape exam, the bill also:

-- Makes secret the identities of victims of sexual or domestic assault, stalking or forcible rape in otherwise public court records.

-- Increases the penalty for repeat offenses of first-degree domestic assault.

-- Prevents law enforcement from requiring someone who reports being the victim of a sexual offense to undergo a lie-detector test before starting a criminal investigation.

-- Allows victims of domestic violence and a few other crimes to use an alternative mailing address at the secretary of state's office, which would then forward the mail to their actual homes.