The SAFE Project

SAFE is an acronym for Sexual Assault Forensic Examinations/Examiners. The SAFE Project is an interactive scrollytelly application that helps sexual assault survivors and journalists understand the many obstacles that face a survivor in reporting their assault. It is a free and web application where a user can learn how a sexual assault forensic kit is collected and follow its journey through the chain-of-custody. The experience starts with state senators who pass and change the law, to the Attorney General’s office that trains medical sexual assault response teams (SART), to the medical examiner who conducts the exam, the forensic analyst in the sheriff’s department who analyze the kit, concluding with the advocate who accompanies the survivor during the exam and helps survivors navigate their trauma.

The Application Development

  • A scrollytelly site generator called idyll-lang was used to generate the CSS however, throughout the process it was heavily customized.
  • React components were created to support the template.
  • The interactive map was built with Flourish & the database used is included in the data folder.