For rape victims across America, the horror of their assault is made worse by the hospital bills that keep coming in the months after their attack. We set out to shine a light on this injustice and connect survivors with a victim advocate who can help.

We started by rewriting real survivors’ medical bills with the true story of their sexual assault to communicate that they were, in essence, being charged for their rape. We then used these repurposed hospital bills to invite millions of other rape survivors to share their own stories in the same way through RapeTax.com, a digital platform with a response mechanism created for the project.

We also transformed bills as a call-to-action, empowering survivors to mobilize others with the same experience, and drive them to the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA), who can help free them from this financial burden.

To raise awareness of this injustice, we repurposed rape victims’ hospital bills, rewriting them to tell the true story of a sexual assault. The designs used each field of the bill to tell these stories, and paired each violating and traumatic act with a price tag. The total added up to approximately $1000—the average price that survivors pay for the medical expenses related to their rape.

In recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month in the US, the Rape Tax campaign was launched April 1st. We adapted the transformed bills into press releases, ran them as print ads in selected newspapers, hung them as posters in targeted areas around NYC, and featured them on billboards in Times Square—all to drive victims to RapeTax.com. Then, using the site’s rape bill generator, hundreds of survivors transformed their own sexual assault accounts into bills, revealing the devastating cost they have already paid.

In the first week after launching The Rape Tax, hundreds of rape survivors created or shared bills with stories of sexual assault on the site. We featured the campaign on multiple digital billboards in Times Square, reaching an estimated 415,000 passersby, and achieving an estimated 1.5 million impressions.

The National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA) had a 60% increase in call volume and a 40% increase in site traffic. We project, as a result of our campaign, over a million dollars will be waived or returned by the end of the year.

We empowered rape survivors to be advocates for change. They transformed hospital bills into defiant statements about the price they’ve already paid for their sexual assault. At the same time, they educated other victims about financial resources they didn’t know existed, so they can put the focus back where it belongs: on healing.