Article by: Claire Ruch
Video by: Kayla Boswell
Photos by: Story Photographers
The Solace Center’s 24-hour rape/sexual assault crisis hotline: 919-828-3005
Six hours and 18 steps – roughly the duration of a sexual assault forensic exam. Rather than an area marked by yellow police tape, the crime scene is the survivor’s body. Her clothes, the evidence.
Injuries in need of immediate care are treated first. Then the survivor discloses her medical history and recounts the intimate details of her trauma to a sexual assault nurse examiner.
Next comes the meticulous head-to-toe inspection. Photos snapped. Samples swabbed. Undergarments collected.
The nurse places each item in a crisp white envelope to avoid cross-contamination. The cardboard box, often called a rape kit, is sealed and sent to law enforcement for DNA testing.
When the exam ends, many survivors are discharged wearing mismatched hand-me-downs or paper scrubs. They leave feeling disposable.
Two nurses in Raleigh believe survivors should wear brand-new clothes when they take their first step out of the hospital and toward healing.
In 2018, sisters Hayley Harris and Lara Purnell co-founded Layers of Dignity, a nonprofit organization that delivers tote bags filled with clothing, toiletries and emotional support resources to sexual assault survivors. They’ve handed out nearly 350 bags at emergency rooms and women’s advocacy centers in Durham and Wake counties.
Purnell worked as a labor and delivery nurse for 10 years before training to become a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE). Harris, who’s been a pediatric emergency nurse for seven years, often performs forensic exams in cases involving children. As medical professionals, they’ve witnessed the devastation of sexual assault firsthand.
Layers of Dignity helps patients in the moments just after those invasive six hours and 18 steps. When the exam ends, survivors receive a tote bag, but it’s the handwritten love note from a fellow survivor that sticks out.
Tucked into the resource packet, the letter is a token of solidarity – a sign the survivor is not alone. It’s also a nod to the large community of women and girls that knows how it feels to have their bodies violated.
According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, one in six women will experience attempted or completed sexual assault in her lifetime.
But the sisters see it as a community of survivors rather than victims.
‘The anniversary’
In 2016, Harris became a survivor herself.
“It was the loneliest time you could ever imagine,” Harris says, describing the aftermath of her assault.
The sisters sit side-by-side in their newly rented office space on Wade Avenue in Raleigh. Layers of Dignity needed more square footage to meet the growing demand for totes. Clothing racks and supply bins line the walls.
They speak with faint Scottish accents mixed with Southern slang, which bring an endearing warmth to their voices. Originating from West Kilbride, their family moved to Raleigh when the siblings were children. Purnell looks with empathetic eyes as her sister recalls the night the nurse became the patient.
Luckily, Harris’ brother ran to her house during the exam and brought back a fresh set of clothes. She knows not everyone has that same support system.
The assault happened on Purnell’s birthday, Aug. 1. Harris considers her sister a secondary survivor. Since that night, they’ve navigated the emotional whirlwind together.
For months, Harris sat in her trauma. Purnell sat beside her. The sisters call it “vicarious trauma.” They began searching for an outlet, anything to jumpstart their healing.
Purnell came up with the idea for Layers of Dignity and pitched it to her sister.
“This would be really easy,” Purnell told Harris – a remark they giggle at now having learned the ins and outs of nonprofits.
“We can just get clothes and put them in a bag and write them a note,” she said. “We work at hospitals. We know how this works.”
Harris agreed.
“This cannot have been in vain,” she told Purnell. “We have to do something.”
What started as a simple donation box at their church became a 501(c)(3) with a board of directors and a mission to carry the torch of support to fellow survivors.
The sisters delivered their first round of totes on Aug. 1, 2018, exactly two years after the assault.
“We’re going to reclaim the date,” Harris told Purnell.
Now they call it “the anniversary” in a much fonder tone. Their darkest moment became their glimmer of hope.
“To see that come full circle for them was really powerful,” says Ashley Stephenson, board member and photographer who documented the first drop-offs.
Controlling the narrative offered the sisters catharsis. But Harris still has days when sweeping her trauma under the rug feels easier than addressing it. She calls her role a catch-22.
Harris says forgetting sexual violence exists would be much easier, but Layers of Dignity gives her and Purnell a productive way to channel their pain.
Packing and delivering those first totes “made it a righteous anger,” Harris says.
And when the statistics feel staggering – every 73 seconds an American is sexually assaulted – putting totes in the hands of survivors proves a direct way to bring them comfort.
“It’s such a tangible, practical thing,” Purnell says.
‘Humbling and heartbreaking’
Spring of 2019 was the first time Harris handed her own patient a Layers of Dignity tote.
After a grueling exam, she offered the bag to a little girl and watched her face light up as she clutched the fluffy stuffed animal. The totes for girls include a more age-appropriate love note and comfort item.
Harris teared up watching the little girl leave.
“It was just all these worlds colliding,” she says.
Purnell hands out totes to survivors at InterAct’s Solace Center, the first community-based center for sexual assault forensic exams in North Carolina.
She works as a sexual assault nurse examiner with Lauren Schwartz, a fellow SANE and the center’s director.
Schwartz explained the survivor’s right to skip a step, pause or end the exam at any point. This means survivors must consent to the collection of their clothes. But the more evidence nurses gather, the better chance of finding DNA that links the perpetrator to the assault.
A new outfit provides “a sense of security,” Schwartz says.
By ensuring survivors have more than flimsy paper scrubs to wear home, Layers of Dignity makes it easier to part with personal items that may result in key evidence.
Above all, Schwartz says, the totes help survivors restore a sense of worth when they need it most:
“They deserve the best that we can offer.”
Layers of Dignity wants survivors to know their physical comfort is not an afterthought.
Each tote includes a tunic top, a cardigan, leggings, fuzzy socks, a soft bra and seamless underwear. Sizes are inclusive, running from XXS to 3X. All items come in muted colors to avoid drawing unwanted attention.
The sisters are careful to weed out graphic T-shirts with ‘Best Day Ever’ or ‘Hugs and Kisses’ printed across the chest.
“You already feel like an eye sore to begin with,” Harris says, so they are mindful to keep only trauma-informed clothing for survivors.
Harris and Purnell welcome monetary donations or ask that people buy garments from their Amazon wish list. It costs approximately $60 to fill each tote. Layers of Dignity also accepts donated boxes of new clothing.
Layers of Dignity hosts packing parties for people who prefer to donate their time. Groups ranging from IBM to sorority chapters have helped stuff totes.
If volunteers happen to be survivors, they can pen a letter of their own. Otherwise, Harris writes the standard love note script.
The sisters hope to deliver totes to medical facilities nationwide in the future. They’d like to expand their resources to help men, Purnell says, who they realize are also survivors.
For now, Layers of Dignity will continue to support local women and girls in crisis, maintaining the quality and intentionality of each tote.
Since their first delivery, the sisters have heard from four survivors, which Harris describes as both “humbling and heartbreaking.”
When asked what she writes in a typical love note, Harris says she’ll keep it between herself and her fellow survivors.
In a perfect world, no one would need the letter at all. No one would endure the trauma of sexual assault. No one would sit through a six-hour exam with 18 steps.
But until then, Layers of Dignity totes will be waiting in hospital wings and advocacy center closets, ready to light up the face of the next survivor.
