The Final Exam

Rape is the most personal of crimes�and so Boulder�s sexual-assault nurses took criticism of their program very personally.

A A A Comments By Juliet Wittman Thursday, Oct 7 1999

...continued from page 5

She was wrong. The next night, on August 19, four of the nurses tendered their resignations effective September 1. So did director Judy Houchins. Dr. Long had already resigned. Two more nurses would resign in the days that followed.

"D.D. sounded like she really wanted to work this out at the mediation," Kimball says. "But Mary Keenan was not there. She was out of town. We're saying, let's have the meeting when she can be present. She's our primary problem here. If Mary Keenan had made any kind of gesture to us that she personally was sorry for the manner it was handled and was willing to work it through...

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David Rehor

Safe space: Many rape victims were taken to SANE's center in Niwot.

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Previous Westword articles

"He Aims to Plea,"
September 24, 1998
D.A. Alex Hunter knows how to keep a lid on crime: Ignore it.

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"She did not do that, ever."

And so Boulder's award-winning SANE program called it quits.

Mary Keenan is currently exploring the idea of running for Alex Hunter's job in the year 2000. But the current DA's top sexual-assault prosecutor won't find much support from the former SANE team.

Keenan insists that center director Judy Houchins resigned voluntarily. After intense questioning by the board, she adds, Houchins was asked if she wanted to stay on and responded in the negative: "She handed us a written resignation. We had not even discussed whether there would be a resignation, whether we would accept one or not."

Although both Houchins and her attorney declined to speak with Westword, the SANE nurses believe she was pressured into resigning. The board only began discussing the possibility of her staying on, they say, after she retained an attorney.

Mallard says the DA's office, along with the Rape Crisis Center and the Child and Family Advocacy Center, is committed to bringing the SANE program back, possibly under the aegis of a local hospital. Cory Hilser, the one SANE nurse who did not resign, is coordinating the effort, she adds. (Hilser did not return Westword's calls.)

"I feel sad when I think about how much time and energy I've put into this program to just say goodbye and walk away from it," says Marilyn Gandolph, another of the SANE nurses. "But we all have our integrity to maintain. We all have licenses we'd like to keep. Until there are changes in the DA's office, I don't see how the SANE program could come back."

"Everybody looked into their hearts," says Kimball, "and realized, this is it. This program is just blown."