Why Are American Doctors Performing Virginity Tests?

[T]he size, thickness, and presence of the hymen—information often collected in sexual-assault medical forensic exams, a.k.a. rape kits—are being used against girls and women. In 2009, a West Virginia court ordered a 15-year-old girl to undergo a gynecological exam to determine if her hymen had been “disturbed” after she accused her brother of years of sexual abuse. In one 2004 Ohio rape case involving a 13-year-old girl, the defense argued that “because the victim’s hymen was intact, she was a virgin and, therefore, could not have been raped”—exactly the kind of statement expert witnesses like Horner work to disprove as medically inaccurate.

In Wetumpka, Alabama . . . defense attorney Desirae Lewis, representing two men accused of rape, made headlines when she asked a court to force the alleged victims to undergo vaginal exams. The defense attorney argued that she needed the results of the sexual-assault exams since the “state had no physical evidence.” The court refused the request. “Having a hymen torn does not show you were raped or sexually abused. It doesn’t show you were not raped or sexually abused,” assistant district attorney Mandy Johnson said.

But Lewis’s scheme is not uncommon. It’s “just another example of people trying these strategies to discredit victims,” says Jennifer Long, a lawyer and CEO of AEquitas, a nonprofit working to refine and strengthen prosecution practices to help survivors of gender-based violence. “If you have an exam and there’s no penetration noted, I can almost guarantee a defense will try and use it against a victim.”