Lantuun Dohio Interviewed INOVA Ewing Forensic Assessment and Consultation Team

Lantuun Dohio has joined partnership with Arlington County’ s Project PEACE (Partnering to End Abuse in the Community for Everyone) in February 2020. Project PEACE has an alliance of sixteen different organizations collaborating to end abuse for everyone, and our team is pleased to work with like-minded partner organizations to educate the public and prevent violence in the community.

On January 25, 2020, Lantuun Dohio in partnership with Project PEACE organized a public event “Be Ready to Help, How to Recognize and Respond to Domestic Violence” to educate and discuss ways in which you can help others when encountered with domestic violence and intimate partner violence. During this event, we had our first encounter with INOVA Ewing Forensic Assessment and Consultation Team (FACT). With great interest in the services INOVA FACT provides and to find out how our organization could contribute, representatives from Lantuun Dohio along with Mongolian Association of Medical Professionals in the DC area have visited their department at INOVA Fairfax Hospital, Fairfax, VA on February 20, 2020.

After our meeting and touring the department, we have invited INOVA FACT’s representative to our podcast to send awareness in the community about their services. We interviewed Ariel Ward, Clinical Educator from INOVA FACT to our podcast aired on March 9, 2020. Please visit this link to listen to the episode.

Here is brief information we learned from the visit and from our interview in our podcast.

INOVA Ewing FACT department has specially trained nurses and physicians who help adult and child victims of sexual and physical abuse and provides medical care and forensic evidence collection. They provide comprehensive physical examination, tests for sexually transmitted diseases and other medical needs related to each case and advocate for them based on each individual’s need. The services the team provides is free of cost and open to anyone who has experienced physical and sexual violence. They also provide language services for individuals who do not speak English.

If you are victim of physical or sexual violence, it is your decision to have evidence collected and these services are provided with your consent, and you can withdraw at any time if you do not feel comfortable. It is best if you seek these medical care and forensic evidence collection within five days of the incident. Whether or not you decide to report to law enforcement, your evidence can be saved up to two years in case you decide to report it later. At request, it can be extended to ten years in Virginia.

For more information about INOVA Ewing Forensic Assessment and Consultation Team, you can visit following link: https://tinyurl.com/ru8pxzz