Episode 16: Crime, Trauma, and the Nursing Lens

Cara Lunsford (03:42.488)
If this is the this is the the magic of editing, right? That's right. That's right. We'll just kick it off. Well, and I, I, okay. I mean, I say this at the beginning of like probably every episode, I'm so excited, but I just get some of the most amazing guests to come on to this podcast, which and and Ria, who is our podcast coordinator, she tracked you down like a bloodhound.

Ann Burgess (03:46.348)
Right, thank heavens we can cut out all this stuff, yeah. Okay. Yep.

Ann Burgess (04:12.034)
Hahaha.

Cara Lunsford (04:14.302)
I'm not even sure how she found you. She was a good detective, maybe not as good as you. But she's pretty good. Well, I'm not sure if you've heard of our podcast before, but we have this is the nurse .podcast.

Ann Burgess (04:14.734)
Good for her. She's good detective.

Ann Burgess (04:23.914)
Okay.

Ann Burgess (04:35.724)
Yeah, I looked you up, so I'm pretty well familiar. It's a great, sounds like a great contribution to nursing.

Cara Lunsford (04:44.344)
thank you, thank you. Well, we've really been enjoying it and this is gonna be the fifth season and you're gonna be our season opener for our fifth season.

Ann Burgess (04:55.534)
if we can get the mic working.

Cara Lunsford (04:59.18)
Exactly, exactly. Only if we can get the mic working. So, Anne, I I came across almost by accident. I came across the Serial Killer podcast where you were interviewed and I was listening to it on a long road trip and I was like, my gosh, this woman is incredible.

Ann Burgess (05:02.498)
Really.

Cara Lunsford (05:29.653)
the stuff that you've done is absolutely amazing. So I'm gonna have you just really quickly for anybody who has not had the opportunity to know about you, hear about you, follow the stuff that's going, that you have going on in Hulu, can you just give us like a really quick?

Ann Burgess (05:50.328)
Right. Right.

Cara Lunsford (05:57.568)
bio just even just going back to how long you've been a nurse like a long time.

Ann Burgess (06:02.734)
Right, I've been a nurse since 1958.

Cara Lunsford (06:07.635)
my gosh. 1958. Okay, I'm going to ask you something that's totally, not connected at all to the stuff that you've done recently or that you're in the media for and all of that. what was nursing like? Just tell me really quick. What was nursing like in 1958?

Ann Burgess (06:27.374)
Well, nursing had certainly all of the biases that you've read about. We had to implement them, if you will. You couldn't call blood blood. You had to call it red liquid. You had to, in fact, when my first teaching position, when I walked in the room, I almost collapsed because they all stood up for me. You these are three year nursing programs. And I thought, my heavens, because I had been educated at a university.

and we weren't used to standing up every time a professor came in the room. that's, it was the handmaiden concept was very much in operation back then, that you were really subservient to the, the doctor was the leader of the team. Not that that had to have any negative to it, but they ate separately.

You really certainly had a stand up if a doctor came in the room, you couldn't be caught sitting down. It was very much a very focused work oriented environment. so, and I went into psych nursing, that was my chosen specialty, if you will. So that was a little bit different than some of your what we would call more regular floor nursing. And actually at that time, they very strongly recommended that you be

a med surg nurse, I think they called them back then, that to go into a specialty like even pediatrics or even psychiatric nursing was wrong. So what that told me is they very much dictated or tried to dictate what you, how your career should go. And you can debate that of course, but it wasn't of the times. And I was of the times when the university teaching and education was coming in.

And that really made a big difference, made a huge difference, I think, for nursing education. And if you followed the history, was very hard to remove the three -year nursing programs, mainly because they were the workforce for the hospitals. And the doctors didn't like it. The administration didn't like it. So it was very hard. It took many, many years to do that. And if you notice, we had a very kind of step up

Ann Burgess (08:50.008)
type of education, yes, you could go three years, then you could go two years and maybe four. So we really never had a pure path, if you will, as other disciplines did to moving the field along.

Cara Lunsford (09:05.1)
So tell me like what...

What was the three years? So, okay, so I graduated with an ADN in nursing. I had gone to school, you I did my prereqs and then I did two years of nursing and it was at county hospitals. So like I went to LA County USC, which had been graduating nurses since the late 1900s. And so that was kind of my

Ann Burgess (09:14.478)
Okay.

Ann Burgess (09:18.584)
Yeah.

Sure.

Ann Burgess (09:25.998)
Okay.

Cara Lunsford (09:37.735)
That was my path and it's so what so Three years what what was three years like was that kind of similar?

Ann Burgess (09:45.038)
Well, three, no, three were, that was the original pattern, three years in the hospital. That's it. And you would get a diploma. It was called a diploma school. Right. Yes.

Cara Lunsford (09:56.096)
The diploma program. Yes, yes. Okay, yes. Because that was, that's what we had at LA County USC also for, you know, back in the late 1900s, like that was what it was. It was a diploma program and they just worked.

Ann Burgess (10:04.77)
Sure.

Ann Burgess (10:11.138)
Right. And psych was separate at that time. Psych hospital, getting a psychiatric nursing background was very different. And it's interesting you raised that question because I think it does bear on how our field has developed so that your education, and it was always remember us struggle between your clinical experience,

in your academic experience. And for a while it was, well, why do nurses have to have all this education? I'm sure you don't remember that, but that was one of the arguments. Doctors said, I don't know why they need all that education. We just show them what to do and they take care of the patient. And for a long time to even get science into nursing as a nursing science has been recent.

Cara Lunsford (10:56.192)
We just tell them what to do.

Ann Burgess (11:09.326)
probably only since 2000. So the barriers, if you will, I think have been very interesting, but they do follow gender bias, in my opinion, just in my opinion. And of course, the field I'm in, which is crime trauma, if you don't want to say rape trauma, that's where I originally started, that is steeped in bias, gender bias. Still, still.

Cara Lunsford (11:39.508)
Yes.

Ann Burgess (11:40.158)
I, I, even when I testify in some very good cases, the defense might say to me, well, you're just a nurse. You're not a psychiatrist. You're not a psychologist. It's been very hard for people to understand what a psychiatric nurse is, let alone what a forensic nurse is. I mean, that that's where we end up today is because you're a what? I'm a psychiatric forensic nurse.

Cara Lunsford (12:06.337)
Yeah.

Ann Burgess (12:09.036)
And they don't understand that forensic just means that you are in the legal realm when you add the word forensic. Now you have a legal case and so much of nursing can be said to be legal, of course, right? We're bound by ethics, we're bound by legal regulation. So I don't know why it's been so hard. Well, it's been hard because of crime. You know, that's been the hard concept to understand. Well, this forensic nurse gets into crime.

And good heavens, does she even get into understanding the criminal, let alone the victim? So.

Cara Lunsford (12:43.478)
which is probably also there's a lot of gender bias also because now you're in an area which even historically has been very male, right? So you're going from nursing, which has been historically very female based. And then you're now you're entering into a field where it's been mostly male and

Ann Burgess (12:55.628)
Yes.

Ann Burgess (13:11.81)
Yes.

Cara Lunsford (13:13.268)
You're quite the trailblazer,

Ann Burgess (13:15.75)
Well, the other thing I often get the question, well, what was it like to teach rape investigation to all men? And I had to think about that when I first was invited to give a lecture at the FBI Academy. I thought as I was, I thought, you know, I've only been lecturing to nurse, women, nurses groups, rape crisis groups, certainly never to law enforcement. So that was really quite a

And I did say to them, yes, I will come in. I want to see what you are teaching them. So that was, that was my, what I was going to get out of it. I wanted to see what a law, the Supreme, extreme, if you will, law enforcement agency was teaching its special agents.

Cara Lunsford (14:05.162)
And what were they teaching their special agents?

Ann Burgess (14:07.712)
Well, that was an interesting story. Roy Hazelwood was the person, the special agent that invited me. And poor Roy was given the task of teaching rape sex crimes. It was called sex crimes when we started. I gave my lecture of sex crimes and I asked Roy how things are going. Well, they gave him, he was the newest agent on board to the academy. So they gave him an unused broom closet for his office.

and he walks in and there on this little bulletin board, there's a pair of black lace panties. And then there's a box, a cardboard box full of sex toys. I don't have to spell those out for you, I hope.

Cara Lunsford (14:49.578)
That's how serious that that's how seriously they were taking it.

Ann Burgess (14:53.654)
That's what they were teaching. So we quickly, helped, or I see that that wasn't a very good title for his class. So he, in his wisdom, and he was very bright, changed it to interpersonal violence, which was very smart right from the start. That, you know, to get the ball rolling, so to speak, so that that no more sex crimes, it was going to be interpersonal violence.

Cara Lunsford (15:23.214)
Isn't it amazing how words matter? Words matter.

Ann Burgess (15:25.943)
Yeah, it's all the difference, all the difference. Words matter. Absolutely.

Cara Lunsford (15:33.024)
That's incredible. when you came in, did you feel like you were well received by this group of like, did you feel like you were well received by them? How was that?

Ann Burgess (15:43.918)
You've never lectured in front of a group of FBI agents. And maybe you don't want to. Well, I'll tell you, they're in the lead group. They are very respectful. They're very polite. They just are very suspicious. And they were, you know, they are very quiet.

Cara Lunsford (15:48.882)
No, I have not. I have not.

Cara Lunsford (15:55.882)
I don't know that I do.

Ann Burgess (16:13.582)
Because I had to think carefully how I was going to lecture, right? And I had to get their attention very quickly, right? So I teach by cases. So I just paraded out some of my worst cases I could find that I had over 200 cases by that time. So I had quite a group to pick from. And I went through the cases. And things got, there's no snickering. There is no more scribbling down. They all were very attentive by the end of the lecture.

so that they knew that this, we were talking about something serious and they couldn't make jokes. In those days, was, there were just so many, and still today there are jokes. In other countries, I just did a newscast for India this week and India has a horrible case of a rape murder of one of their young female doctors.

Cara Lunsford (16:48.395)
Yeah.

Ann Burgess (17:08.75)
And the whole, they're finally getting protests, doctors protested, males and females protested, and they have a very backward, they're kind of where we were probably 20, 30 years ago. So cultural issues are important and how you make change is very important. And I've always said nurses have a great opportunity because we see and work with

Cara Lunsford (17:24.736)
Yes.

Ann Burgess (17:32.908)
a wide variety of people. mean, I'll look at your podcasts. It was very impressive to see the kinds of topics that you have. And we required nurses and our students, I'm at Boston College, to understand culture and community and that, you can't. I had to be very careful in that interview of what I said. I don't know if you want me to talk a little bit about, they wanted me to talk about how can women protect themselves.

Cara Lunsford (17:56.502)
Sure.

Ann Burgess (18:00.79)
And of course, I wanted, I said the best way is find out why these men are raping. You you really got to get it at who's doing it. You know, if you have an infection or a bacteria or something, you've got to find out if it's a bacteria or a virus. I mean, you can't do much to kill somebody, right? If you don't know what has injured them. So I had to, they kept wanting me to go back to.

Cara Lunsford (18:21.802)
Right, right.

Ann Burgess (18:26.114)
put in better lighting and put in transportation. And of course those are important, but they've got to find out why men are raped. Their statistics are awful. They're very high. Every night they have more and more victims.

Cara Lunsford (18:44.086)
So, you know, that's interesting that you say that because when I was in college, had in my literature class, we did some studying around the dead women of Juarez. And what was really appeared to be an epidemic of women being killed.

in Juarez and there was a lot of hypotheses around why this was. Whether it was that the women were entering the workforce and that was not well received. It was almost like a putting women in their place type of thing. It's like, we'll teach you.

Ann Burgess (19:29.612)
Yeah, yeah, well, that's it. It's the hierarchies, the dominance, it's the control. Those are the major concepts.

Cara Lunsford (19:37.291)
Yeah.

Yes, absolutely. Is there some of that that you are uncovering even in what you were looking at in terms of India? That that it because it seems to be kind of pervasive in terms of just control keeping. Yes, yes, absolutely. Keeping women.

Ann Burgess (19:53.644)
Yes.

it's historical, don't you think? Yeah.

Cara Lunsford (20:01.694)
in their place, keeping them down, keeping them subservient. And what better way than to use your physicality, your physical strength to demonstrate that, to say, it doesn't matter how smart you become, it doesn't matter how resourceful you become, I'm still gonna be stronger than you.

Ann Burgess (20:06.008)
Right, right.

Ann Burgess (20:13.347)
Yes.

Ann Burgess (20:24.844)
Yeah, I'm going to be stronger. Yeah. And I think that Indian case is an example of that. He had to show her that he was in charge and he smothered her. Very unusual way to murder someone is to smother them. And there are other things I've found out other things, that was exactly what you're saying is so often in any of these horrible domestic cases. It was not a domestic case. I shouldn't say that.

Cara Lunsford (20:39.019)
Yeah.

Ann Burgess (20:53.954)
that case, but it was a, he had her under his surveillance and he was going to, you know, why he picked her, I think she was vulnerable and he was, he was a police volunteer. He had wormed his way into the police. Yeah. Very, very. And now at first he confessed and now he's saying he didn't do it. So he's running them ragged. You know, he is totally in control.

Cara Lunsford (21:20.792)
So how often do people...

Cara Lunsford (21:26.86)
So when you find someone who has done something like this, how often is it that they've done it before and just haven't been caught?

Ann Burgess (21:37.454)
right. If you've got, they've done it before. This is not a first time thing. I know everybody wants to say it was his first rape or this is the only time. No, you know that we only have less than half of women come forward to report. So you have a large unreporting group. I'm doing a case now of a quadruple murder where it's,

going to be very interesting how that case goes, but they had been in a romantic relationship. They had been married and they still were married and she had really wanted to end the relationship and he wasn't going to let her and he didn't. He went through three other persons to kill them to get out of the way, changed his weapon to a knife when he attacked and killed her.

And they're trying to say, the other side is trying to say he has a bipolar complex PTSD. So that's going to be very interesting to see how that plays out because the psychiatrist leader in the complex PTSD diagnosis, which is still controversial to some degree, I had worked with her.

She's retired now, but I had worked with her. So that's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. But he wasn't going to let her get away with it. Like you said, know, even he even had the killer to prove his point.

Cara Lunsford (23:05.101)
I'm always fascinated. Of course.

Cara Lunsford (23:11.914)
Yeah, it's a, yeah, it's like, I'll teach you a lesson type of thing. Like, I'm gonna, and it's almost like...

Cara Lunsford (23:25.876)
you know, that there's a, I'm going to demonstrate not just to this person who I'm going to kill, but it's almost like a message that is being sent to all women of some sort. It's like, I'm gonna do this really horrible thing, like this, and it's gonna...

Ann Burgess (23:44.076)
Yes. Yes.

Cara Lunsford (23:53.492)
it's gonna be directed at this person, in some way it's almost like this bigger message towards all women of like, you should be scared. You should be scared of men. You should be...

Ann Burgess (24:01.24)
it is, right. Absolutely. Yeah, you're not. And he had been, you originally said had they ever done it before? Sure, he had been married before and he had beaten up his wives. So that's not unusual that they would have that pattern. And of course he had a terrible family background where the father did the same thing to the mother, didn't kill her, but would beat her up regularly. So, and then people say, well, don't women, you know,

Why do they put up with it? What's their alternative? You know, we haven't prepared. We're trying to do a lot and provide services, but it's very difficult for women to get out of these situations. And how many are going to leave if they thought he's going to kill them? So they'll be subservient. They'll do what he says. And that's often what the family says. We'll just, you know, don't fight them. Don't provoke them. Well, come on. You know, it's, it's a.

Cara Lunsford (24:46.124)
Exactly.

Cara Lunsford (24:58.613)
It's really sad. It is and there's I think we Yeah.

Ann Burgess (24:58.976)
It's a vicious circle.

Ann Burgess (25:04.514)
We have to do something about the gender. How are you bringing up, yeah.

Cara Lunsford (25:07.414)
I think we want to try and understand, right? think we inherently, inherently, think we want to try and understand why people do what they do. Because if we can understand it and we can recognize it, then in some way, maybe we'll be safer. Maybe we'll feel safe in the world if we can understand the why or how or who. And that's...

Ann Burgess (25:28.834)
Yes.

Ann Burgess (25:34.862)
Sure.

Cara Lunsford (25:38.396)
that's kind of the tough thing, right? Is that like, I was just listening to something yesterday where this woman was, you know, sitting alone eating and some man came up and was like, Hey, can I join you? And, and seemed very friendly, seemed kind and just said, you know, I'd love to join you. Do you mind? And they had a conversation. Then he said, I'd like to show you around the town. Would you be

willing you know to for me to show you around the town and and she said yes and then he killed her

Ann Burgess (26:17.516)
Sure. we have a... That is one of the types that will do that. It's what we call, he has high social competence. He knows how to approach women in a way that they will respond. And so are we to teach women what you have to be suspicious of?

Well, yeah, we better, right? You don't want to go and maybe it's it might not be the polite thing to do, but to say, no, I don't want to. I want to eat my sandwich alone. You know, you can't join me or something like that. But that's a great example. Horrible example.

Cara Lunsford (26:56.32)
Yeah, which is so sad because like when I, it's so funny because I'm the VP of community, which is so, it actually speaks volumes as to who I am as a person. I talk to people all the time.

strangers on planes in random places and to the to the point where my mother my own mother is like please Kara please stop talking to strangers you're gonna you know you're you're gonna roll the dice and it's you're you're always rolling the dice and and it's sad because I feel like so much of my life has been enriched by the people that I have met to the people that I've connected with and when I hear stories like I did yesterday

Ann Burgess (27:26.296)
Sure.

Sure.

Cara Lunsford (27:42.106)
I was like, that's me. That is me in a nutshell.

Ann Burgess (27:45.624)
Sure. But your nursing background probably played into that. We're taught to be polite. We're taught to be nice. You have to like all your patients. What do do if you don't like a patient? We don't teach that, we? So, yeah. So it's a dilemma, but it's one that I think we have to address. Because I think a lot of us are like you, that you don't want to offend anybody.

Cara Lunsford (27:59.54)
You still have to take care of them.

Cara Lunsford (28:07.371)
Yeah.

Cara Lunsford (28:14.154)
Yeah, and also, for me, I've met...

the strangers I've met in my life have shaped my life in so many ways, in really beautiful ways. And so then I start to question like, what if I, do I have a good gauge? I guess I have a good gauge. Maybe I'm attracting the right people. But at the same time, I wanna make sure that I'm not putting myself in really dangerous situations.

Ann Burgess (28:43.95)
Sure. I can give you another example of one that put the blame on the woman right from the start. He was in an apartment complex and he was going by knocking on doors and the third door opened. This happened to be a young woman that was expecting somebody around that time. And as he pushed in, he said, didn't your father ever tell you not to open the door to strangers? So now,

And of course he raped her. was a terrible case. And that's going to be in her head. That is one of the, if you talk about how do you help somebody move on is how do you get that out of her head? Because her father probably had said, don't open your door to strangers. Well, wouldn't we say that to many of our children? That's not an uncommon thing. So he already has excused himself. I wouldn't have done this if she hadn't opened the door.

Cara Lunsford (29:42.78)
And do you talk to strangers? I'm curious.

Ann Burgess (29:45.838)
I talk to strangers that there's a good reason if I'm on an airplane and you know, somebody needs to get to the seat. So a lot depends on what what what you're doing. But I'm pretty sure I always look busy. That's the other thing is just, you know, have a have a book. Everybody's got these phones now so that they have an excuse to pull out the phone and you don't bother people, I guess, if they're reading. So maybe that is a good thing.

Cara Lunsford (29:56.926)
Yeah, because I I

Cara Lunsford (30:11.936)
Well, that's true. Yes, I noticed a lot of people will put like their headphones in or something like that to try and not look approachable. But at the same time,

Ann Burgess (30:17.976)
Sure, sure.

Cara Lunsford (30:25.054)
Like I said, I feel a personal dilemma. I feel because like I said, I feel like my life has been really enriched by strangers in a lot of ways. And at the same time, like how do you move about the world with a sense of freedom and...

Cara Lunsford (30:51.19)
feeling a sense of hope, I guess, towards humanity, and at the same time, be protective of yourself. You have to do both, right?

Ann Burgess (30:54.987)
Ann Burgess (31:00.812)
Yeah, well I certainly have changed since I've been in this area of work. You've got to have a certain degree of suspicion that was never there before. And one of the ways that you can get that is to understand, I think that's why women particularly are high, they're into crime, the crime world so to speak, the crime.

what do they call it, conference kind of thing. They're trying to understand why people do what they do. And I think one of the things you learn is how clever they are, the offender is, in getting access to his victim. That's one of the first concepts we talk about is, well, why did he pick that victim? It's the victimology piece, if you will. And it's always gonna be some piece of vulnerability that they latch onto. So.

One of the ways you try to protect yourself is to understand these kind of lures or the way that the word now is grooming. The case that you just described, he kind of groomed her from just sitting down to have a cup of coffee or whatever, and then only take her around the city. And the next thing you know, that is not an unusual progression, if you will, of how.

Cara Lunsford (32:14.89)
Yeah, to just lure someone in. And, you know, one of the things I think that we're uniquely positioned as nurses is that we have really great gut instincts. Our gut instincts are generally, think, pretty, we hone them. I think we generally try to, or we hone them a little bit where you sometimes you call the doctor and you say, look, this patient just, something's off.

Ann Burgess (32:35.448)
Right.

Ann Burgess (32:41.336)
Something, yeah. Right.

Cara Lunsford (32:43.412)
something doesn't feel right and they're like, well, what's this and what's that? And it's like, you know what, the numbers look okay, but I'm telling you that this patient's going downhill and something's going. And so maybe that's also something that we have the ability to do is really check in with ourselves is what, you know, my Spidey sense a little bit is like, are my hair standing up on end of the hair on back of my neck? And I have like, do I feel like

Ann Burgess (32:52.578)
Yeah, something's going on, yeah.

Cara Lunsford (33:11.838)
You know what, something's off about this person.

Ann Burgess (33:14.862)
Yeah, we asked that. I actually, we call it coping measures in rape. we found out of our 46 or 92, 15 had early exactly what you're describing, early warning signs, but they didn't pay attention and they went into the situation. They ignored them. Yeah. Yeah. And it's okay. Sometimes you can ignore them and everything is okay.

Cara Lunsford (33:32.906)
They ignored them. Yeah. And yeah.

Ann Burgess (33:40.706)
You know, and you can kind of back on, know, kind of back yourself up on that. So it's hard because you have only your life experiences to go by unless you get some education. That's what you're trying to do is educate people. That's your hope. Your work is educate people on various parts of nursing so that they are better nurses and better better understand the world.

Cara Lunsford (34:06.592)
Yeah. And the reason why I love having people on like you, Anne, is that I love for nurses to be able to see how expansive their profession can be, how diverse, all of the incredible options that are available to you if you just take an interest.

and decide that you're you want to follow something you're passionate about because you really seem to have an extraordinary passion for this.

Ann Burgess (34:45.208)
Well, yes, I'd agree with that.

Cara Lunsford (34:48.949)
I mean, you're very good at it. very, you're obviously very good at it. How? And so when did you know? So you went into psychiatric nursing, when did you know that this was something that you were particularly interested in? Like just, well, psychiatric nursing, but then move moving into like profiling and victim ology and all that.

Ann Burgess (35:04.61)
You mean psychiatric nursing?

Ann Burgess (35:11.83)
Okay, that gets two answers. Getting into psychiatric nursing was really interesting. I was having my exit interview with my psychiatric instructor. I was at Boston University and she said to me, you'd make a good psychiatric nurse. And so I took that little word and that was it. she probably said that to every one of my classmates. You know, it's like the mother that says, you're my special one, right?

But I took it to heart. And I went right into, again, something you weren't supposed to do. You're supposed to go and get clinical experience, right? No, I went right ahead and got all my degrees all at once. And I went into psych nursing. But the part to your question, I had luck to be at the right place at the right time. So getting into the research on rape victims,

was because of another assistant professor at Boston College, Linda Holmstrom, that was trying to find a new research topic. She had just finished her first one. And she had three that she was interested in, of which one was on rape. Now she knew that the rape movement was going to be a big one. And it was. It was very powerful. The women, were setting up these...

what they call consciousness raising groups all over the country. So they were getting a mass going, if you will, of movement. And she thought this might be interesting. And she was having trouble finding victims. And so I used my nursing background to contact all of the hospitals in Boston to see whether they let us come and interview rape victims. I heard back on none, nothing.

So I began making phone calls and talking to the nurse educators and they would say, I have to check with medicine and they aren't returning my calls. So there was my first barrier that the nurse, the head nurse and the organization, I'm talking Mass General Hospital, Brigham and Women's, these are big time hospitals. They had to get doctors, but I had forgotten one hospital.

Cara Lunsford (37:25.206)
Yeah.

Ann Burgess (37:30.726)
And it just so happened that my nursing instructor had just moved over there as executive. She managed a really good title for herself. I don't know, executive vice president of nursing or something like that. And so I called there and I said to the secretary, you know, please tell her that Penny Wolbert is calling and no, please tell her Ann Burgess is calling. I use my more formal name. And she came back and she said, you know, she's busy. So I knew that.

That didn't get me in. So I said, please ask her one more time that you take a call from Penny Wohlberg. That was my maiden name and my nickname that everybody called me. She took it immediately. And that's how I got in. So my lesson there is keep your nursing network open. You never know when some other nurse is going to need you or you need them. And that was key. That was how we got in. And Andy said,

Anne Hargreaves was her name. She said, I don't need any doctor to tell me. know that you, I know your work and I know that you'll, you'll be good with rape victims. I didn't know what a rape victim was. You know, we'd never studied it except, no, we were psychoanalytic at the time. So the two theories were that she was provocative and that she wanted it. Those were the two myths that were prevalent in Boston from an analytic standpoint. So that started it. And then the other was when I,

Cara Lunsford (38:55.36)
Was this in the 70s? was...

Ann Burgess (38:59.106)
the FBI needed to do some, teach their special agents. Now that worked out because Roy Hazelwood was out doing what they call a road school, said that he had this, he was bemoaning this new assignment he had to have to teach this new course. And afterward he says, anybody know anything about rape? Now you can imagine to a group of Los Angeles law enforcement that didn't go over well. But afterwards Rita Kinnett came up, she was a detective.

with the juvenile division, she said, you know, she's also a nurse and she had been working weekends, had picked up the American Journal of Nursing that weekend and saw the article, the very first article Linda and I wrote and it was called The Rape Victim in the Emergency Room. Very simple title. And she said, that, check her out. She's a nurse out on the East Coast. And he did. He did. He called me up and that was, that's what invited me down. That was it.

Cara Lunsford (39:57.516)
Isn't that amazing? It's just amazing how you...

Cara Lunsford (40:04.564)
A, you just said yes to a lot of things, right? You really just were like, yes, I'm gonna, yes, I'm gonna do that. Yes, I'm going to, and relentless, pretty tenacious, I would say. similarly, I'm a very tenacious person. So somebody tells me no, and it's really just an opportunity for me to say, yeah.

Ann Burgess (40:13.912)
Cheers.

Ann Burgess (40:27.394)
Yeah. Right. And we get told no a lot, don't forget. That's right. See it as a challenge, not as a barrier.

Cara Lunsford (40:32.384)
How can I get around that? No. Yes. Exactly. Exactly true. And there's so much of this that people who are the nurses and people who are listening to this episode can take away from this because these are like the soft skills, I guess you could say, where it's like, this is the stuff that

if you can tap into it, if you can tap into it and say, you know what, I'm really passionate. I want to know the answer to this. I want to do this thing. And I'm not going to let really anyone stand in my way because I want to understand this better. And I want to be a part of this. so, and then look at everything you've done since then, just because.

Ann Burgess (41:01.39)
Sure. Right.

Cara Lunsford (41:25.248)
A, you were tenacious. And also, there was a person on the other side who said, you know what? Yes. That person also said, yes, yes, I'm going to, I'm going to make this go, you know, we're going to make this get through. And how much you have then been able to learn and contribute.

Ann Burgess (41:37.068)
Yeah, yeah, sure.

Cara Lunsford (41:50.868)
to what we now know about rape, about...

Ann Burgess (41:53.016)
Sure.

Ann Burgess (41:57.772)
Right.

Cara Lunsford (41:58.773)
It's pretty amazing what we have the ability to do when we put our minds to it.

Ann Burgess (42:05.294)
I think, yes, I think the last 50 years has, we've made great strides. We still have a lot to do, but we've progressed. We've progressed.

Cara Lunsford (42:13.962)
And you've been a huge part of that, That is really, really amazing that you've been such a huge part of it.

Ann Burgess (42:20.064)
Well, yeah, I'm not sure I've been well, I've been a part of it, of course, but it's it shows how nurses have been able to move the needle, so to speak. It's the nurses that became the sexual assault nurse examiners. The docs didn't want to do it. They saw an opportunity and they have made a wonderful contribution. They're all over the country. Right. Any hospital now has a saying.

coordinator, whatever they call them. So it's giving the right material to the nursing group. They are a powerful group and we should try to do that. That was my whole thing. So yes, I had a part in it, but they picked the ball up and ran with it. I have to say that.

Cara Lunsford (43:07.858)
Yes, yes, absolutely. We'll give credit to all the people, right? All the amazing nurses and all these trailblazers. But it's not lost on me that you have been around and doing this from a time when it was not necessarily popular for women to be.

Ann Burgess (43:28.922)
absolutely. I was discouraged by my nursing colleagues. They said, you shouldn't do this. It's going to hurt your career. And there are still some people that will say, we started out with this. What is a forensic nurse? What is a psych nurse that people still don't necessarily understand?

Cara Lunsford (43:44.854)
Yeah.

Cara Lunsford (43:50.422)
So you're still, so today, okay, so let me go back really quick. I'm gonna go back really quick. So when you really started doing all of this, what we were just talking about, this was in, was this in the 70s? In the 70s, 80s? When was?

Ann Burgess (44:07.438)
Linda and I did our study in 1971, one year study, 71 to 72. We saw 146 people. We went in the minute we got called. The triage nurse would call us. We both went in. We both met with the victim. I did the follow -up by telephone back in those days. Now telehealth is good in those days. What is this telephone stuff? And Linda went to court. She had the easier job because very few cases went to court.

I had the hard job. I got to find all the victims to talk to. But that's how we put it together, is so we could come up with the rape trauma syndrome, which I got a lot of pushback on. Psychologists, you know, they got in there with their fancy numbers and said, this isn't good research or something like that. They never understood that it was hypothesis generating, not hypothesis testing.

So we had to try to clear that up. But there's still, you know, there's a lot of fighting in the field when you get up into the, you get in the arena. Let me put it that way.

Cara Lunsford (45:15.744)
Yeah, nobody wants their previous work to be discredited in any way or questioned, right? But that's our job. That's our job. so during that time when you were doing that research,

Ann Burgess (45:24.151)
Right.

Ann Burgess (45:28.002)
That's our job, right.

Cara Lunsford (45:39.102)
You were saying that before that, it was like the hypothesis really, or the theory was that, you know, these women were provocative. They were asking for it in some way. And then, what did you, so during your research, what did you come away with? Like, what were you, what did you learn? What were you learning? What did you learn about these women?

Ann Burgess (45:45.591)
Right.

Ann Burgess (45:52.877)
Right.

Ann Burgess (46:01.986)
What was I doing?

Ann Burgess (46:06.27)
I was learning about the aftermath. That's what my job was in the research arena is, well, so how do people, how do these women recover? We had three males, but we had predominantly all females. And that was important to, and that's where we documented the recovery and the trauma. So that contributed to nursing.

Cara Lunsford (46:21.902)
But did you have...

So yeah, so you were documenting the trauma, you were documenting the recovery and the trauma, but did you start to have some theories about, okay, well, these women are not provocative. These women are not asking for it. These women, like, what did you start to uncover about who they were?

Ann Burgess (46:47.502)
Well, right, our big contribution in that arena was the paper on rape, power, anger, and sexuality. We didn't put sexuality, we said that, yes, it occurs in a sexual context, but the issues for the male are dominance, control, and power. Anger also, the ones that, and we came up with four categories, and pretty much still teach that as a way for women to,

try to understand who they've confronted, whether this is someone that's in a power mode, so to speak, or anger. The anger and the sadistic are really lethal. They were very serious.

Cara Lunsford (47:28.598)
So it really ended up being more of a focus on the predator versus who the victim is and what she's doing or what he's doing and more.

Ann Burgess (47:38.83)
Well, we happened to our very first lecture, it was a very tiny group, maybe not probably more than 20 people, but they also had with Linda and I a psychologist from the Mass Treatment Center and he worked with sex offenders. So Nick Grove was very, he was the part of that. He was able to do the research on the offender. We use the victim input from what

the victim said about the offender to try to get both kind of bookends of the same incident. And that's where we wrote some pretty good papers that got that out and started the myth of rape is not sex.

Cara Lunsford (48:23.114)
Rape is not sex.

Ann Burgess (48:24.236)
Right, it's not sect. And it comes from the head of the offender, not from his body, so to speak. And it is meeting psychological needs of power, dominance, control.

Cara Lunsford (48:37.6)
Yeah, and such an important, this is such an important differentiator because like you said, prior to that, it was really thought that women, women were acting in a way that was creating this. was like, how are they going to resist you if you...

Ann Burgess (48:44.003)
Right.

Ann Burgess (48:58.679)
Right.

Ann Burgess (49:02.616)
Right. And it's pretty hard. It was hard to convince a jury that because they had those same beliefs that the way we tried to do that is to get the very vulnerable victim, the young and the old, because they couldn't talk with children under five. We did a lot of work on children under five and how they would present being raped. They didn't want to believe, you know, that. And then we I'm doing a lot in the area of nursing homes where the

victim has dementia and they want to say well it doesn't bother them you know they didn't even know what happened and of course that's not true but you have to be able to document the change in behavior that says that something was it's a harder pitch if you will to convince people up but we're doing it and I think there is a change there it's I've done over a hundred cases of nursing home cases males and females it isn't just females

It's a big problem, yeah. Then the other third group that we're really looking at is I'm trying to move into AI and looking at the mass shooters. They're all young and how they're thinking patterns because we all are potential victims in a mass shooting because they go into a, yeah, it's not like a serial killer that really focuses in on one person.

Cara Lunsford (50:03.435)
You know.

Ann Burgess (50:29.066)
So that's our next task, our next challenge.

Cara Lunsford (50:33.036)
Do you have some theories on that yet?

Ann Burgess (50:36.43)
well, we've got, we analyzed, we're using AI machine learning to analyze 23 manifestos. Now that's before the fact. That's why we're trying to do manifestos before they, because a lot of them kill themselves in the act. And we're looking at, I have my students that work with me looking at social media postings after there's a crime.

And we're looking at what we call pathways to violence. There are about six different pathways and you want to know kind of where they're at. The police are getting these calls and they don't know what to do with them. You know, is this a mess? Is he going to go out and look at the Butler PA case?

Cara Lunsford (51:20.148)
Yeah, exactly. It's, I could talk to you for like hours and hours and I honestly, I feel like I have so many things. I'm like, my gosh, I have to ask her about this and I have to ask her about this. I, because you're fast, you are fascinating. You're fascinating. And I think we are all as nurses, we are studying people all the time. We are constantly.

trying to understand, understand our patients and we have to try it because we, time is not on our side usually. And so we have to try and understand people very quickly. You you kind of have to get to the meat very quickly when you're talking to people. And so it's something that we are, I'm plugging my computer back in.

Ann Burgess (52:10.701)
Right.

Cara Lunsford (52:17.992)
It's something that we, it's a skill set that I think we are always honing and getting better at. And maybe we go into nursing because we naturally have some of that. And so we're attracted to the profession for that reason. But at the end of the day, I think that many of us are fascinated by sociology. I say all the time that if I wasn't a nurse,

Ann Burgess (52:29.432)
Sure, yeah.

Cara Lunsford (52:44.106)
I would have gone to school and gotten my master's or my PhD in sociology because I am just consistently fascinated by people. I also say that I'm like a hopeless romantic when it comes to humanity. Like I really genuinely love people. Not all people, but not all people, but I genuinely have.

Ann Burgess (53:04.558)
Thank you.

Not all good.

Cara Lunsford (53:14.218)
this innate kind of love for people. yeah, that there's a hope. I guess I carry a hope with me that that most of us, most of us are inherently good. I think that most of us are also damaged in a lot of ways. But the but the one thing that I wanted to ask you

Ann Burgess (53:18.104)
Sure, sure. And I think most nurses do. I agree, yeah.

Ann Burgess (53:39.09)
Okay.

Cara Lunsford (53:43.285)
really quickly is how do you, and I ask this because you're a nurse, but you also see and hear a lot of things, a lot of really horrible things, traumatic things. And what do you do to take care of yourself? Do you have a therapist? Do you have someone that you talk to? Like, how do you deal with the darkness that you see and hear and experience?

Ann Burgess (53:54.36)
Sure.

Ann Burgess (54:12.376)
Well, I know we're, think that we're prepared for that when we go into nursing, we see a lot of darkness, you know, it isn't, you'd like to think everybody's going to get better and you can help and all that. So I think that we are, we learn that early and we learn how to separate ourselves from the emotional part of what we're seeing. I do think that that's important because you can't get emotional if you're trying to take care of a sick child.

or sick, know, somebody comes in in an emergency. So I think having that as a background had prepared me to, I have other outlets, you know, I have a family, I have friends, I have my teaching. So that I have other things that I, so I don't dwell on these cases. I have a group that we talked about, in this field, you always have to have someone who has a higher understanding if you will, if you have a complex case.

I mean, get a lot of complex cases, but I have people that I can go to. And you're learning. I just feel that I'm learning. And any new case I'm interested in, because it's new, I can refer the traditional run -of -the -mill cases to others that need the experience. So I feel as though I'm always helping, just that I'm not going to take, I can't take all the cases that come my way.

So I think that to answer you that nurses have to have some kind of an outlet in their another life. It's not all work.

Cara Lunsford (55:37.972)
Yeah.

Cara Lunsford (55:47.156)
Yes, it cannot be just your identity. It can't be your identity. Yeah? What kind of music do you like?

Ann Burgess (55:48.992)
Yeah, right. I like music, you know, so I listen to music.

Ann Burgess (55:56.908)
Well, I like music that I can understand the lyrics. Let me put it that way. I have a hard time understanding some lyrics. So, you know, I love I Am Woman. I always play that before I go into court, put my bulletproof vest on as I march into court. you know, take on another persona to, because I know they're going to, the defense is going to come after me, shoot me down for something. So I'm prepared.

Cara Lunsford (56:18.772)
I love that.

Ann Burgess (56:27.208)
Thanks.

Cara Lunsford (56:28.345)
I'm gonna literally, I think when my wife does the editing for this podcast, because she won an Emmy for sound and so she happens to do our podcast, which is really wonderful. I'm gonna tell her, like, we're gonna have to have a little I Am Woman in the background of the intro for you.

Ann Burgess (56:40.625)
good, yeah.

Ann Burgess (56:46.03)
At the end of the, that'd be great.

Cara Lunsford (56:50.42)
Yes, for sure. Absolutely. Well, Anne, like I said, I could talk to you for two more hours and make this into like a three part series. Because I feel like there's just, it's like we've only scratched the surface of just what you've done, what you've contributed, who you are, what you...

Cara Lunsford (57:17.3)
I feel like when nurses get an opportunity to hear from someone like you, who's had just decades and decades of experience, and that you've experienced nursing from the 1950s all the way up to today, that that kind of history is so important. Because if we can understand the past, and we can understand where we've come from, and we can understand the power that we have,

to affect change and you know to really yeah to really change the future

Ann Burgess (57:50.402)
Yeah, that's good.

Ann Burgess (57:55.694)
You know, the other thing is every nurse has a story. Like I've always felt, every victim has a story. Everybody has a story. And you want to understand it and get it out and see what, but nurses will see how they're contributing. Cause they just do so much that I don't think gets full credit for what they do. That's really been my whole thing.

Cara Lunsford (58:16.364)
Absolutely. Well, I'm eternally grateful for you spending an hour with me today. Yeah, I try. they're gonna love it. They're gonna love it. They're gonna love it. They're gonna love it. I know it. I know it. I know them. They're gonna love it. And just I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day. And

Ann Burgess (58:24.33)
Okay, happy to do it. It's been very, very enjoyable. Hope you're, let's see what your audience thinks. You have to see how they react. Yeah, you have to wait.

Ann Burgess (58:44.992)
I have to go teach now. I have to tell them all about you and your podcast. Now, I think I've got 230 students ready to face me. I have large classes. Yeah.

Cara Lunsford (58:46.784)
Go teach. Okay, go teach. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Anne. Thank you so much.

Cara Lunsford (58:58.484)
my gosh. wow. Okay, well one of these days I would love to sit in on one of your classes if I could. I will, I'll fly to you just to do it.

Ann Burgess (59:05.324)
Hahaha

we tape them. We can tape it for you.

Cara Lunsford (59:11.922)
Okay, well, I would love a copy. Thank you. All right. All right. And have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you. Bye bye.

Ann Burgess (59:15.626)
Sounds good. Okay, Kara, sounds good. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Bye -bye.