Researchers at Penn's School of Nursing have found that sexual-assault injuries are more easily detected in light-skinned women than in dark-skinned ones, potentially putting black women at a disadvantage in the health-care and legal systems.
In the study, published in the November issue of The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 120 women were examined after engaging in consensual sexual intercourse.
Nearly three times the number of injuries to external genitalia were found in white women, compared to those found in black women.
Nursing professor Marylin Sommers, the lead researcher in the experiment, said the results are significant because they demonstrate that the current forensic examination given to rape victims and its one-size-fits-all approach may not be optimal for dark-skinned women.
"We can't be color blind," Sommers said. "We have to be color sensitive."
Sommers said the study also has implications for women's health care following assaults. It also shows that it may be harder for doctors to determine proper treatment for black women.
If women are injured because of sexual assault, "we should be able to assess and treat them regardless of their skin color," she said.
She added that the disparity in detecting injuries hurts black women in the court system, because offenders are more likely to be prosecuted and incarcerated if there is physical evidence of the assault.
One possible reason for the differences in the number of detections is that the dark-blue dye used in the forensic exam to highlight injuries shows a greater contrast with lighter skin, Sommers said.
She also said there could be properties of dark skin that makes it less prone to injury.
Sommers also said that she and other researchers are doing follow-up studies related to their findings in this one, performing similar tests on biracial, Hispanic and Asian women.
They are also looking at the elasticity and hydration of different skin types.
In the future, Sommers said, researchers are also planning to match black women with black examiners, to eliminate the possibility of examiner bias. Only white examiners were used in the original study.
The researchers are working with Thomas Jefferson University's sexual-assault center, comparing the Penn researcher's images of women after consensual sex with images of assaulted women.
