Given that 91% of rape and sexual assault victims are female, the practice of billing survivors for their rape speaks to a larger issue of gender discrimination in the US healthcare system. Because our society and legal system often hold victims accountable for their rape, our healthcare system does too.

In the past year, more and more survivors of sexual assault have been sharing their stories through the #MeToo movement. As a result, there have been great strides in awareness and policy changes regarding sexual assault crimes. However, much work remains: there is still such little awareness of the aftermath of sexual assault, and the barriers victims in America face in getting the healthcare, financial, and legal support they need to focus on their healing and recovery.

States can sometimes cover these bills, but vague federal guidelines and local bureaucracy means victims are often stuck paying for the brutal crime committed against them. In the words of one female rape victim: "It's like being punched in the gut when you open that mailbox and you see that bill." What’s worse, the extra costs could deter victims from reporting an already underreported crime, or from receiving treatment at all.

In the US, rape victims are forced to pay an average $1000 in hospital bills after their sexual assault. We created a campaign to challenge this cruel practice 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. And then we 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 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.

According to research, victims of sexual trauma are more likely to open up online than in person because they can remain less exposed. So, we built a digital platform where rape survivors could safely share their stories, turn them into customized bills, and express the hidden costs of being a victim of rape — an average $1000 for related medical treatment.

At RapeTax.com, we created an online gallery of customized bills, created by rape victims, for other viewers to read and share on their behalf. The bills were also turned into print ads, posters, online videos, press releases, and even digital billboards in Times Square, so we could mobilize even more survivors of sexual assault to get assistance through the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA).

Rape is a vicious crime—it can also be expensive. In the US, 9 out of 10 victims are forced to pay an average $1000 in hospital bills after an attack. After visiting the hospital, a majority of rape victims will incur charges in the months after an assault, including testing for STD and pregnancy, as well as prescriptions for antibiotics, pain medication, HIV prevention, and emergency contraception. Given that 91% of the victims of rape and sexual assault are female, this represents another example of injustice that women face within the US healthcare system.

Sexual Assault Awareness Month in the US was the perfect time to raise awareness about this remarkable injustice. We wanted to empower rape survivors to raise their voices—to expose the financial burden that they must endure on top of the emotional and mental burden they suffer in the aftermath of sexual assault. At the same time, we set out to connect rape victims across the nation, who received an unjust hospital bill, to the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA) to get the help they deserve.