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About Us
The Crime Victims Treatment Center (CVTC) of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center is located in a pleasant, home-like setting on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The Center, which was established in 1977, began as a small, grassroots program. It is now the largest and most comprehensive hospital-based victim treatment center in New York and one of the largest in the nation. CVTC has provided a model for other health care institutions in the United States and around the world in the treatment of survivors of sexual assault, childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence and other violent crimes.
CVTC has a multicultural staff of New York State certified social workers (and a psychiatrist) with an accumulation of over 150 years of experience in the treatment of emotional trauma due to victimization. The staff offers a full range of free services for victims of violence, including crisis intervention, individual, family, and group counseling and psychiatric consultation.
A crucial element of CVTC's success is the contribution made by our Volunteer Advocates. These dedicated people are recruited from the community and trained to provide emergency room crisis intervention, advocacy and emotional support for sexual assault and domestic violence survivors and their families. The original core of twenty women has grown into 170 women and men. To date, CVTC has trained more than 1,000 advocates, many of whom have gone on to incorporate this work into their lives as writers, performing and visual artists, teachers, lawyers, doctors and social workers.
Since its inception, CVTC has been on the cutting edge of medical and forensic care for victims of violence. At a time when hospitals did not have standards of care for sexual assault, CVTC pioneered the development of treatment protocols, evidence collection systems, and after-care support services. At a time when volunteer rape crisis counselors were looked upon with suspicion, CVTC ensured that trained volunteer advocates became an integral part of the treatment of rape survivors in the emergency room. CVTC was the first program in New York City to address the problem of male sexual assault by recruiting and training male rape crisis advocates, and St. Luke's-Roosevelt was one of the first hospitals in New York City to implement a Sexual Assault Examiner Program.
CVTC initiated the Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner Program (SAFE) in conjunction with the Department of Emergency Medicine as part of our continuing mission to provide the best and most comprehensive treatment to victims of violent crime. Through the SAFE Program, specially trained doctors, nurses and physician assistants are on-call to provide compassionate medical care and the most technologically advanced forensic evidence collection for survivors of sexual assault.
In order to insure more sensitive treatment for victims of domestic violence seeking treatment in our emergency departments, CVTC spearheaded another ED based program: the Domestic Violence Identification and Intervention Project. This comprehensive program includes screening, medical and forensic documentation, follow-up treatment and counseling. Advocacy and support is provided by Domestic Violence Advocates, some of whom are formerly battered women.
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