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Get the exam first. It is free, it does not require a police report, and for an adult it is available within 120 hours. The Houston hospitals that perform it are listed on our Houston SANE exam locations page, and our what to do now page walks through the first days in order.
If you are able to, report to the police now. You are not required to, but the same early evidence that builds a prosecution builds a civil claim.
Then call 713-521-0059, or message us, and say it happened this week. We will tell you what your case needs and get it started, beginning with written notice to whoever holds the video and records so it is kept. There is no guaranteed response time, but we typically respond within 12 to 24 hours of a call or message.
Two things usually decide whether a lawyer can help you: what proof exists, and how fast it is disappearing. Some of it is on your body and your phone. Most of it is in the records of the business or building where it happened, and those records often run on an automatic timer.
You do not need to decide anything today, and you do not need a police report or a criminal case. What cannot wait is the video and the access logs, which a business can erase within days. Call 713-521-0059 so a preservation letter can go out before that happens.
A claim against a hotel, an apartment complex, a bar, a school or a company is usually built from its own records. Surveillance video is often the most important item and the fastest to go. The case is Brookshire Bros., Ltd. v. Aldridge, 438 S.W.3d 9 (Tex. 2014). There the Supreme Court of Texas said a store’s cameras “recorded surveillance video in a continuous loop that, after approximately thirty days, recorded over prior events.” The store kept about eight minutes of footage, out of a system that held roughly a month.
Keycard and access logs record each door entry with a timestamp, and they purge on a schedule. Rideshare trip records, GPS routes and in-app messages sit on a company’s servers, not on your phone. Broken gates, dark lights and bad locks are often fixed within days. Prior complaints about the same driver, employee or stairwell can show what the owner knew before it happened to you.
Which records exist depends on the place; see our pages on hotel and motel assault, apartment complex sexual assault, assault at a business or on commercial property and rideshare sexual assault.
In Texas a business usually has no duty to preserve anything until it knows, or reasonably should know, that there is a substantial chance a claim will be filed. It must also know, or reasonably should know, that the records it holds will matter to that claim.
A preservation letter is a written demand that whoever holds evidence keep it. A company that gets one and destroys the material anyway can face sanctions in the case itself, such as a spoliation instruction to the jury. A letter that asks a company to “preserve all evidence” does far less than a specific one. A specific letter names the camera locations, the retention setting, the access control system, the vendor holding the telematics and the specific personnel file.
Until a business is told, its system keeps overwriting on schedule. A dated, specific letter from a lawyer is what changes that, so it should usually go out in days, not weeks.
Not for the forensic exam or the kit, and you do not have to report. Under Texas law a survivor “may not be required to pay for” the forensic portion of the exam or the evidence collection kit. The provider bills the Texas Attorney General directly. Other medical care you receive that night is handled on a separate track, so ask the hospital which part is which. Our page on Texas Crime Victims Compensation explains a program that can help with some costs.
You also do not have to report. Texas law says a survivor “may not be required to participate in the investigation or prosecution of an offense as a condition of receiving a forensic medical examination”.
Texas does not use a seventy-two hour cutoff. The Texas figure is 120 hours, and it is not a deadline. Up to that point, a provider must perform the exam for an adult who walks in and consents.
Past 120 hours, the exam is still required if a law enforcement agency refers you. It is also required if a physician or a sexual assault examiner or nurse examiner evaluates you and decides an exam should be done. For someone under 18, the duty applies regardless of when they arrive.
If you are past five days, ask an examiner rather than deciding for yourself. The United States Department of Justice says collection decisions should be made case by case, and that many jurisdictions have moved past the seventy-two hour figure. It also observes that “advancing DNA technologies continue to extend time limits because of the stability of DNA and sensitivity of testing.”
A trained examiner, usually a sexual assault nurse examiner, explains each step first. There is a history, a medical assessment, and collection from the places the Texas protocol lists: oral, genital, anal, hair, clothing, fingernails and dried secretions. The kit is then sealed and documented. Consent to one part is not consent to all of it, and you can stop.
Texas law requires the facility to offer you a private area, if one is available, to wait or to speak with medical, legal or crisis-center staff. It must also offer a sexual assault program advocate and a private treatment room, each if one is available. You are entitled to medication to prevent sexually transmitted infection where your history indicates it. You also get the name and telephone number of the nearest crisis center and, if the facility has showers, a shower at no cost after the exam. The facility is to presume that an adult asking for an exam is competent to consent.
If the exam has not happened yet, RAINN advises avoiding showering, bathing, removing or changing your clothes, using the restroom, and combing or brushing your hair first. If you already did, as most people have, it does not close the door. Mouth swabs usually come before eating or drinking, so hold off on both if you can.
Keep your clothes unwashed, in paper bags, not plastic. The Texas protocol directs examiners to seal clothing “separately in paper bags”, and RAINN says paper as well. Plastic can hold moisture and work against you. Do not delete anything on your phone, including messages you regret, and back it up now.
Photograph your injuries and the place itself. Keep anything that proves you were there and when: receipts, ride records, hotel folios, key card records, ticket stubs, parking stubs, and bank and card transactions. Write down what you told the front desk, the manager, the courtesy officer, the property manager, the school or the employer, and what they said back. Follow up by email or text, so a date exists.
Keep the names of the people you told, such as friends, family, a roommate, a nurse or a counselor. In a civil case, each of them can be a witness to when this happened and how you were. Keep your medical and counseling records too. The harm in these cases is often mental anguish, and it is proved largely through the treatment record.
If you reported to police, the kit must be kept “for not less than 40 years, or until any applicable statute of limitations has expired, whichever period is longer”, as the statute puts it. That rule applies “regardless of whether a person has been apprehended for or charged with committing the offense.”
If you did not report, the kit is kept until the fifth anniversary of collection or the day you give written consent to release it, whichever comes first. After the fifth anniversary, it can be destroyed only after notice of the planned destruction goes into the state’s tracking system and no objection from you arrives within 90 days.
The tracking system, called Track-Kit, shows the status and location of your evidence. If you choose limited-consent DNA testing, the results also come back to you through Track-Kit. An employee may not give a parent or guardian information that would help them reach these records. That applies if the employee knows or has reason to believe the parent or guardian is a suspect or a suspected accomplice.
For evidence collected on or after 1 December 2025, you can consent to limited DNA testing by the Department of Public Safety without reporting. The results come back to you. The Department may not notify anyone else or use them for another purpose without your further written consent. The trade-off is that you give up the comparison against DNA databases, which could link the same person to other cases.
Most people do, and it is rarely what decides a claim against a business. Physical evidence is rarely the only proof, and delay in telling anyone is normal and documented.
A police report often helps. It creates a dated record of what you said and when, and it opens the route to database comparison. It is not required, and it is your decision.
If you are not sure where to start, this order usually works:
Deadlines for these claims can be shorter than you expect, and the deadline against a business may differ from the one against the person who did it. Our page on the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims in Texas explains the periods.
Every statute and case linked above was read at its primary source. Texas statutes change every legislative session and case law is constantly changing.
This page is general information about Texas law. It is not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Advocates and clinicians can call us to ask whether a set of facts is worth preserving. There is no expectation that anyone is referring anything.
When you call, we tell you what your case needs and get it started. Where the facts call for it, that begins with written notice to the business, the property manager, the management company and anyone else holding records, naming the cameras, the date and time window, and the logs and reports to be kept. Where the case calls for it, we bring in the right experts and, where it serves you, co-counsel with the resources a case like this demands; that decision is made in writing, with your consent, and it does not increase your total fee. You do not have to arrive with a case. You can arrive with a date, an address, and what you remember.
Schiffer Law Firm is a Houston personal injury firm with 50 plus years of combined experience representing injured people and survivors across Texas.
If you are an advocate or a counselor asking on someone’s behalf, you are welcome to call with a general question. We will not ask you for their name.
There is no charge to talk, and no attorney’s fee unless there is a recovery.
Written by Jacob Schiffer, Attorney, Schiffer Law Firm. State Bar of Texas No. 24105175.
Call 713-521-0059.
It depends on the system. In one case the Supreme Court of Texas described a store's cameras recording over themselves after about thirty days, and the store kept about eight minutes.
It is a written demand that a property owner or business stop deleting specified records. It costs you nothing, commits you to nothing, and keeps your options open.
No. Preserving evidence and deciding whether to bring a case are two different decisions. Only the first one is urgent.
Usually not. That is what most people do, and a claim against a business is built from the business's own records.
Yes. We will answer a general question about how preservation works without asking who the survivor is.