Baltimore County asks sexual assault survivors treated at GBMC between 1977 and 1997 to reach out

Baltimore County officials are urging sexual assault survivors treated at Greater Baltimore Medical Center between 1977 and 1997 to get in touch as an effort to test decades-old evidence accelerates this year.

In November, Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. and other county leaders said they would use up to $2 million in state and private funding to finish testing more than 1,400 evidence slides collected at the GBMC in Towson.

“Anyone who commits a crime, especially these crimes, should be held accountable no matter how long it has been,” Olszewski said at a news conference Tuesday.

Dr. Rudiger Breitenecker of GBMC saved material collected from more than 2,000 sexual assaults, beginning his pioneering work in forensic pathology even before DNA evidence was used in criminal cases. Advocates are now asking patients who sought care at the hospital after sexual assaults during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to reach out.

Survivors can call the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault (MCASA) at 833-364-0046 or email notification@mcasa.org to opt-in or out of receiving information about their sexual assault evidence. The hotline is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Survivors can learn about their legal options and access counseling and other services through MCASA and TurnAround Inc., Baltimore County’s rape crisis center.

Those who call can provide their contact information and how they wish to be contacted — or they can say they don’t wish to revisit a decades-old sexual assault, MCASA’s Laura Jessick said.

“The women, the men and children that undergo these exams, they should be seen as heroes,” said Lisae Jordan, MCASA’s executive director. “They have already gone through trauma and then they go to a doctor, or a nurse or a healthcare professional, and they have another invasive, intrusive exam so the community can be rid of a sex offender.”

TurnAround Executive Director Amanda Rodriguez said her organization and MCASA are not affiliated with law enforcement and just because a survivor reaches out doesn’t mean they must pursue criminal charges.

“If you believe you are impacted by this, we’re giving you the option to step in front of it and call now,” Rodriguez said. “There wasn’t reason to wait.”

While police and victim advocates will try to reach any known victims as their slides are tested, allowing survivors to opt-in to receive information is a “victim-centered, trauma-informed” approach, she said.

More than 1,000 slides collected at the Towson hospital have been sent to a lab for testing already, Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough said Tuesday. Police expect all the remaining GBMC slides to be tested by the end of this year.

DNA evidence from previously tested slides has been used to solve county sexual assault cases in the past. Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said DNA profiles obtained from slide evidence led to 49 convictions in the 1990s and 2000s.

In August 2023, after testing additional GBMC slides, police arrested 71-year-old James William Shipe Sr. and charged him with raping multiple women in the 1970s and 1980s. His trial is scheduled for January 2025.

“Until this past summer with these new hits on a new case, I thought we hit all the stranger-on-stranger sexual assaults and that was the standard by which we went back then,” Shellenberger said.

He said the slides’ DNA evidence previously was considered necessary only for prosecuting sexual assaults involving people who didn’t know each other, since victims who knew their attackers could identify them in court.

Jessick said that while the majority of sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim, perpetrators still can go on to assault multiple people. County officials and survivor advocates said that the comprehensive slide testing effort is important not just for prosecutions, but to provide a sense of closure to survivors.

Survivors treated at GBMC between 1977 and 1997 can call the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault (MCASA) at 833-364-0046 or email notification@mcasa.org to opt-in or out of receiving information about their sexual assault evidence.