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This page is written for you rather than for a survivor.
If you work in a hospital, a rape crisis center, a district attorney’s victim services unit, a campus office, a shelter or a counseling practice, you are often the person a survivor asks the practical questions. What will this cost. Can I move. Will I lose my job. Do I have to press charges.
This is what Texas law provides, with the common misinformation flagged. Nothing here asks you to refer anyone anywhere. Use what is useful.
Where Texas law changed recently, this page says what changed and when, because several widely used sources have not caught up. Where the law is unsettled, or where a figure is set by agency rule rather than by statute, it says that too.
The forensic exam is free, and it does not require a police report. Article 56A.304(f) of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that a victim of sexual assault may not be required to pay for the forensic portion of the examination or for the evidence collection kit. The Attorney General reimburses the provider directly. A survivor who does not want to report can still be examined and have the evidence preserved.
Getting the exam counts as cooperation as a matter of law. Article 56B.107(d) provides that receiving a forensic medical examination constitutes sufficient evidence that the victim has substantially cooperated with an investigation. Article 56B.107(c) separately prohibits denying or reducing a compensation award based on the survivor’s interactions with law enforcement at the crime scene or the hospital. If a survivor froze, gave a partial statement, or left before an officer arrived, that does not disqualify her.
There is no 72-hour reporting rule for compensation. Article 56B.053 requires a report “within a reasonable period, but not so late as to interfere with or hamper the investigation and prosecution of the offense after the criminally injurious conduct is committed.” No fixed deadline appears anywhere in the statute. The Attorney General may extend the time for extraordinary circumstances, and the requirement does not apply at all if the victim is a child. The 72-hour figure that circulates in training materials is not the law.
No arrest, charge or conviction is required for compensation. The Attorney General decides on a preponderance of the evidence. A case that will not be prosecuted is still a compensable case.
Counseling is capped in sessions, not dollars. Sixty sessions for conduct on or after 1 September 2014, generally one per week. The $3,000 counseling figure still printed in some materials expired more than a decade ago.
The forensic portion of the exam is free. The medical portion, meaning treatment of injuries, medication and testing, is a separate cost reimbursable through the Emergency Medical Care track rather than free at the point of service. That is why a survivor can leave an emergency department having paid nothing for the kit and receive a bill three weeks later, and conclude that someone lied to her.
Two recent changes help. For examinations on or after 1 September 2025, House Bill 47 extended coverage to other medical care provided during the examination and to prescribed continuing care related to the assault for 30 days afterward, including medication and testing. And the Attorney General publishes a limit of up to $25,000 for emergency medical care reimbursement for sexual assault examinations after 31 August 2023.
If a survivor brings you a bill for a forensic examination, that bill is wrong. The provider should be directed to bill the Office of the Attorney General.
If you learned this area before 2023, you learned that Texas had a separate statutory pathway for a survivor who was not reporting, housed in its own subchapter. That structure is gone. S.B. 1401, 88th Legislature (2023), repealed Subchapter F of Chapter 56A of the Code of Criminal Procedure outright, struck the words “Not Reporting Assault” from the Subchapter G heading, and collapsed the two exam pathways into one, in which reporting is not a condition of getting an exam. It took effect 1 September 2023 and applies to an offense first reported, or for which medical care was first sought, on or after that date. Where care was first sought earlier, the former law governs.
The reported and unreported distinction has not gone away. It survives for evidence handling and for how long the kit is kept, which this page covers below. What changed is that not reporting is no longer a separate pathway a survivor has to ask for.
So the practical consequence is a change in how you say it. Not “she can ask for the non-report exam.” Rather, reporting is not a condition of the exam at all. Article 56A.303(c): a victim of sexual assault “may not be required to participate in the investigation or prosecution of an offense as a condition of receiving a forensic medical examination under this article.” Health and Safety Code Section 323.054(d) repeats it for SAFE programs and adds that she may not be required to pay any cost described by Article 56A.304(a).
This is the newest change in the area and the one most likely to matter on a shift. Government Code Section 420.0736, added by H.B. 1422, 89th Legislature (2025), lets a survivor give limited consent for the Department of Public Safety to perform forensic DNA testing on the evidence collected during her exam “without regard to whether a report of the offense is made to a law enforcement agency.” Results are delivered to her through the statewide tracking system, and the Department may not notify any other entity or use the results for any other purpose without further written consent.
The applicability date is the whole question and it is not the effective date. Section 23(b) of the Act applies the provision only to biological evidence collected on or after 1 December 2025. A kit collected before that date is not eligible. The same clause carries Article 56A.306 and Section 420.0735 as amended by that Act, so check the collection date before relying on any of the three.
The statute requires the consent form to carry this warning in these words, and a survivor deciding on the spot deserves to hear the trade-off rather than the headline:
“IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO REPORT AN OFFENSE TO A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY IN ORDER TO OBTAIN FORENSIC DNA TESTING OF BIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE COLLECTED DURING YOUR FORENSIC MEDICAL EXAMINATION. HOWEVER, IF YOU AUTHORIZE FORENSIC DNA TESTING OF THE BIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE COLLECTED DURING YOUR EXAMINATION WITHOUT REPORTING THE OFFENSE TO LAW ENFORCEMENT, ANY RESULTS OF THE FORENSIC DNA TESTING WILL NOT BE COMPARED TO DNA PROFILES MAINTAINED IN DNA DATABASES AND WILL NOT BE SUBJECT TO USE IN A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OR TRIAL.”
She gains an answer without involving police. She gives up the database comparison that could tie the same person to other cases. The Department must also give her information on how to report later if she wants the comparison run.
For conduct on or after 1 September 2025 there is a state-law claim against a Texas public school district or open-enrollment charter school for a professional employee’s sexual misconduct against an enrolled student, and for failure to report suspected child abuse. H.B. 4623, 89th Legislature (2025), added Chapter 118 to the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Section 118.006(a) waives the school’s governmental immunity to suit and from liability to the extent of the liability the chapter creates, and Section 118.006(b) provides that a professional school employee “may not assert official immunity under Subchapter B, Chapter 22, Education Code, the common law, or any other law” in such an action.
Before this, a Texas school district was largely unreachable in state tort. Section 101.051 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code provides that “[e]xcept as to motor vehicles, this chapter does not apply to a school district or to a junior college district,” and Education Code Section 22.0511(a) makes a professional employee not personally liable for discretionary acts within the scope of employment, “except in circumstances in which a professional employee uses excessive force in the discipline of students or negligence resulting in bodily injury to students.” Those two exceptions have always been there, but they were written around discipline and bodily injury, which is an awkward fit for sexual abuse. That is why Section 118.006(b) matters: it takes the immunity off the table by name rather than leaving families to argue about whether abuse fits an exception drafted for something else.
Four things to hold accurately, because they are already being described wrong.
The standard is not negligence. Section 118.002(a) reaches a school that “is grossly negligent or reckless, or engages in intentional misconduct, in hiring, supervising, or employing a professional school employee.” Anything describing this as a negligent hiring statute is describing a version of the bill that did not become law.
It is prospective only. The Act applies “only to an act or omission that occurs on or after the effective date,” which is 1 September 2025.
The employee has to be sued too. Section 118.002(b): “In an action against a public school under this chapter, the professional school employee who committed the act or omission on which the claim is based must be named as a defendant.” In a failure-to-report claim that means the person who did not report has to be identified, not just the district.
Remedies are cumulative under Section 118.005, so the federal routes remain available and are not displaced. Actual damages are capped at $500,000 per claimant under Section 118.003, and Section 118.004 awards costs and fees to the prevailing party, which includes a district that wins.
What this means at the point of contact: the date of the conduct is now the first question in a school case, and the answer needs to be a range rather than a single date, because a course of conduct that continues past 1 September 2025 is a different case from one that ended before it. Our page on sexual abuse at a Texas public school goes through it for families.
The Texas figure is 120 hours and it is not a cutoff. Article 56A.303(a)(2)(A)(i) makes the exam mandatory, on the patient’s consent, for an adult who arrives within 120 hours. Article 56A.303(a)(2)(A)(ii) makes it mandatory beyond 120 hours where a law enforcement agency refers the victim, or where a physician, sexual assault examiner or sexual assault nurse examiner has conducted a preliminary medical evaluation and determined that an exam should be conducted. For a victim who is a minor, the duty applies “regardless of when the victim arrives at the provider.” Consent is a condition in every branch, which is worth saying plainly, because a patient’s refusal is the commonest reason an exam does not happen and it is not a failure of anyone’s duty.
So the second referral route in that provision is yours. A nurse or physician who evaluates a survivor past five days and concludes an exam should be done triggers the mandatory duty without any law enforcement involvement at all. That is worth knowing in a building where someone is about to tell a patient she is too late.
Beyond Texas: the United States Department of Justice’s national protocol describes 72 hours as the figure jurisdictions “have traditionally used,” declines to endorse a cutoff, directs case-by-case decisions, and notes that “advancing DNA technologies continue to extend time limits because of the stability of DNA and sensitivity of testing.” End Violence Against Women International reports 72, 96, 120 and 168 hour timeframes in use and states that viable evidence can exist well beyond them.
Article 56A.304(a) entitles a health care provider that provides a forensic medical examination, “or the sexual assault examiner or sexual assault nurse examiner who conducts that examination in accordance with this subchapter, as applicable,” to be reimbursed by the Attorney General, in an amount set by Attorney General rule, for the reasonable costs of the forensic portion of the examination, the evidence collection kit, and the reasonable costs of other medical care provided during the examination under Health and Safety Code Chapter 323, Subchapters A and B. The subsection opens “On application to the attorney general and subject to Article 56A.305(e),” and that cross-reference matters to a billing office: Article 56A.305(e) lets the Attorney General deny or reduce a payment to the extent reimbursement is recouped from a collateral source.
New as of 1 September 2025, and easy to miss: H.B. 47, 89th Legislature (2025), amended Article 56A.304(a)(3) to add the reasonable costs “of any prescribed continuing medical care that is related to the sexual assault and provided to the victim during the 30-day period following that examination, including medication and medical testing.” Follow-up care in that window is now inside the reimbursement. The exam date decides whether the continuing-care costs are reimbursable.
The application, under Article 56A.304(b), goes to the Attorney General in the form and manner the Attorney General prescribes, and must include a certification that the examination was conducted in accordance with Article 56A.303(a) and a complete, itemized bill.
The condition that catches programs out is Article 56A.304(d), and it is a premises and examiner condition rather than a deadline. Read it in the code and you will find two texts of the same subsection, because two 2021 bills amended it and both versions were carried into the statute. One reads: “A health care provider is not entitled to reimbursement under this article unless the forensic medical examination was conducted at the provider by a physician, sexual assault examiner, or sexual assault nurse examiner.” The other reads: “A health care provider is not entitled to reimbursement under this article unless the forensic medical examination was conducted on the premises of the provider by a sexual assault examiner or sexual assault nurse examiner.” The difference is whether a physician who is not a certified examiner can conduct a reimbursable exam. A program that relies on physician-conducted exams should raise that with the Attorney General’s office rather than assume.
Article 56A.304(c) requires the provider or examiner to accept the Attorney General’s payment as payment for the costs, unless a written request for additional reimbursement is made with supporting documentation and the Attorney General determines there is reasonable justification for more. Article 56A.304(e): the Attorney General may provide training on the reimbursement process on request.
Article 56A.304(f) is the one to quote to a patient: a victim of a sexual assault “may not be required to pay for” the forensic portion of the forensic medical examination or the evidence collection kit.
State it precisely to survivors. The forensic portion and the kit are protected. Other medical care that night runs on a separate track under Article 56A.305, is paid by the Attorney General in accordance with the Labor Code medical fee guidelines, and carries a maximum set by the statute itself. Telling a patient “the whole visit is free” is how a survivor ends up with a bill and a grievance.
Two practical notes. Article 56A.304 states no application deadline anywhere in its own text; whether Attorney General rule imposes one is a question for the agency. And the reimbursement amounts under Article 56A.304 are set by Attorney General rule and change without legislation, so check the Attorney General’s pages for current figures rather than a number on anyone’s website, including this one.
Government Code Section 420.031(f): “Failure to comply with evidence collection procedures or requirements adopted under this section does not affect the admissibility of the evidence in a trial of the offense.” Parallel clauses appear at Section 420.035(d) and Section 420.042(f). Note the scope those words carry: each of the three is addressed to the trial of the offense, meaning the criminal case.
The civil point stands on its own footing and does not need the statute. Collect correctly, document what happened, and note deviations rather than hiding them. A documented deviation is a fact a lawyer can work with. An undocumented one is a credibility problem for everyone in the room.
Two different retention rules, and the split is the most commonly misstated proposition in the subject area.
Reported to law enforcement. Code of Criminal Procedure Article 38.43(c-1) requires that the contents of a sexual assault examination kit collected pursuant to an investigation or prosecution of a felony be retained and preserved “for not less than 40 years, or until any applicable statute of limitations has expired, whichever period is longer,” and it applies “regardless of whether a person has been apprehended for or charged with committing the offense.” It is a floor, not an expiry date.
Not reported. Article 56A.306(b) requires preservation until the earlier of the fifth anniversary of collection or the date written consent to release is obtained under Government Code Section 420.0735. Article 56A.306(c) permits destruction on the expiration of that five year duty only if notice of the planned destruction is entered into the statewide electronic tracking system and no objection is received from the victim before the ninety-first day after the notice was entered. The notice and objection procedure attaches to the five year branch; it does not apply where the duty ends because she consented to release the evidence. In its current form it applies to evidence collected on or after 1 September 2019.
Whether a kit that begins in the unreported pathway and is later reported moves into the forty-year regime is unsettled. It is the question a survivor is most likely to ask, and it is one to put to a lawyer or to the Department of Public Safety with the facts in hand.
So the sentence to say out loud is not “the kit is kept for forty years.” It is that the period depends on whether the offense was reported, and that a survivor in the unreported pathway has five years and a ninety-one day objection window rather than decades.
Tracking. Government Code Section 420.034 requires a statewide electronic tracking system that lets a survivor anonymously track or receive updates on the status and location of each item of evidence through the criminal justice process. It is Track-Kit, at tx.track-kit.us. It shows status and location. It does not show DNA results, except in the Section 420.0736 limited consent pathway, where the results come back to her through the same system.
One provision worth having at hand in a case involving a family member, Section 420.034(f): an employee “may not disclose to a parent or legal guardian of a survivor information that would aid the parent or legal guardian in accessing records relating to evidence tracked under the system if the employee knows or has reason to believe that the parent or legal guardian is a suspect or a suspected accomplice” in the offense.
Government Code Section 420.071(a) makes any communication between an advocate and a survivor made in the course of advising, counseling or assisting the survivor confidential. Subsection (b) makes confidential any record created by, provided to or maintained by an advocate that relates to services provided to a survivor. Subsection (c) gives the survivor a privilege to refuse to disclose and to prevent disclosure, “[i]n any civil, criminal, administrative, or legislative proceeding, subject to Section 420.072.”
Two features that help. The privilege reaches civil litigation expressly, not only criminal. And Section 420.071(c-1) provides that an unauthorized partial disclosure does not waive it, with waiver available only as to the disclosed portion and only on motion.
Read the qualifier, because it is the part that governs your own obligations. Section 420.072 sets out when disclosure is permitted, and two of its grounds matter on a shift. Disclosure is permitted where it is necessary to comply with Chapter 261 of the Family Code or Chapter 48 of the Human Resources Code, which are the child abuse and the vulnerable adult reporting statutes. And it is permitted where an advocate determines that, without disclosure, there is a probability of imminent physical danger to any person or of immediate mental or emotional injury to the survivor. Section 420.072(c) also provides that the Texas Rules of Evidence govern disclosure where an expert witness relies on the communication or record to form an opinion.
The practical consequence, and it is the one to get right before a patient asks: this privilege does not displace your mandatory reporting duty, and it should not be described to a survivor as unqualified confidentiality. Say what is true, that the record is confidential and the privilege is hers, and that reporting obligations are a separate duty that the privilege yields to.
Know the boundary of the word too, because it is narrower than the label suggests. “Advocate” is defined in Section 420.003 as a person who provides advocacy services as an employee or volunteer of a sexual assault program. A sexual assault nurse examiner is separately defined and is not an advocate. Chapter 420’s privilege covers the advocate’s file. It does not by itself cover the hospital’s SANE chart, which lives under the medical and mental health privileges in Rules 509 and 510 of the Texas Rules of Evidence. Note the cut both ways: because Section 420.071(b) reaches records “provided to” an advocate, a copy of a chart sitting in an advocate’s file is confidential in her hands even though the hospital’s original is not.
The exception under those Rules that decides most civil cases is worth naming. Rule 509(e)(4) and Rule 510(d)(5) each lift the privilege where a party “relies on the patient’s physical, mental, or emotional condition as a part of the party’s claim or defense and the communication or record is relevant to that condition.” It runs against any party, including a defendant who puts her condition at issue, and how a case is pleaded affects how far it reaches. That is a conversation to have with a lawyer before records are subpoenaed rather than after. Our page on therapy records in a sexual assault lawsuit covers it for survivors.
Release of kit evidence is controlled by the survivor once she is old enough to sign. Section 420.0735(a) requires written consent signed by the survivor if she is fourteen or older, by her parent or guardian or an employee of the Department of Family and Protective Services if she is younger than fourteen, or by her personal representative if she is deceased.
This is the part your work does not usually cover, and it is the part where the numbers change by an order of magnitude.
Compensation is capped at $50,000 in the aggregate and pays defined categories of out-of-pocket loss. A civil claim is not capped in the same way and seeks full damages from whoever was responsible.
Two claims usually exist, and they are different.
Against the person who committed the assault. Real, and often uncollectible. Individuals rarely carry insurance that responds, and a judgment against someone with no assets is a piece of paper.
Against a business or property owner whose negligence made it possible. This is where recovery actually comes from, because these defendants carry liability insurance. An apartment complex with a gate that had been broken for months. A hotel with a keycard system that did not work and prior incidents in its own files. A business that had been warned about a specific employee. A rideshare company with prior complaints about the same driver.
Texas requires two showings for that second claim. That the risk was foreseeable, under Timberwalk Apartments, Partners, Inc. v. Cain, 972 S.W.2d 749 (Tex. 1998), or under Del Lago Partners, Inc. v. Smith, 307 S.W.3d 762 (Tex. 2010), where the owner had actual knowledge of a building risk. And that the risk was unreasonable, which UDR Texas Properties, L.P. v. Petrie, No. 15-0197 (Tex. Jan. 27, 2017), holds is a separate question requiring separate evidence.
It depends on the facts, the periods are not intuitive, and the deadline for a claim against a business or an institution is not necessarily the same as the deadline for a claim against the person who did it.
The one thing worth telling her plainly is the working assumption. Treat two years from the incident as real, and get the question answered by a lawyer long before that. That is what this firm does with its own files, and it is safe in both directions: if a longer period turns out to apply, nothing is lost by having called early, and if it does not, the case is still alive.
What is settled. Section 16.0045 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code sets thirty years for conduct violating the enumerated child offenses and five years for the enumerated adult offenses, measured from accrual, and Section 16.003 supplies a residual two year period that expressly yields to Section 16.0045. Claims involving intimate visual material have their own ten year period under Section 98B.009, running from the later of reasonable discovery of the material or the depicted person turning eighteen.
A survivor who was abused as a child and assumes it is far too late is frequently wrong about that, and it is worth encouraging her to ask rather than to assume.
One point on which many sources are wrong. The 2019 amendment that raised the child period to thirty years is not a revival statute. By its own terms it reaches a cause of action that accrued on or after 1 September 2019, or one that accrued before that date if the limitations period had not already expired by then. A claim that was already barred stayed barred. Texas did not reopen expired childhood abuse claims, and anyone telling a survivor otherwise is setting her up for a hard conversation later.
What is not settled, and this is the part a professional should carry. Whether Section 16.0045’s longer periods reach a negligence claim against a business or institution that did not itself commit the offense has not been decided by the Texas Supreme Court. The Houston Fourteenth Court of Appeals held that the statute is not limited to suits against perpetrators, in Stephanie M. v. Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate Diocese, 362 S.W.3d 656 (Tex. App. Houston [14th Dist.] 2011, pet. denied), construing the provision as it was then numbered. Where the institution had a hiring, employment, enrollment or supervisory relationship with the person who committed the assault, a school, a church, an employer, a care facility, the argument for the longer period is well supported. Where the assailant was a stranger and the defendant is a property owner, an apartment complex or a hotel or a parking garage, the question is open. So the shape of the case changes how confident anyone can be about the deadline, and that is a reason to ask early rather than to guess.
There are also deadlines that run much shorter than any of this, depending on who is being sued. Crime victims compensation has its own application deadline, three years from the conduct with extensions for good cause and separate rules for child victims and for documented incapacity. Some claims against governmental units carry a notice requirement measured in months rather than years. A survivor who waits to find out which rule applies to her can lose the case while the question is open.
So the useful thing to tell her is not a number pulled off a website. It is that two years is the working assumption, that the real answer turns on facts she should not have to sort out alone, and that a conversation early costs nothing and closes nothing.
If you take one practical thing from this page, take this one.
Surveillance video records over itself on a loop, and nobody outside the business knows how its system is set. In one case the Supreme Court of Texas described a store’s cameras recording over prior events after about thirty days; the store kept about eight minutes. Keycard and access logs age out. Broken gates get repaired. Burned-out lights get replaced. Incident reports get filed and forgotten. Staff move on.
By the time a survivor is ready to think about a civil claim, which is often months later and appropriately so, the proof that the property knew is frequently gone.
A preservation letter costs nothing and can be sent within days, long before anyone decides whether to bring a claim. It does not commit the survivor to anything. If you are working with someone who was assaulted at a business or a residential property, that single step preserves the option. Our page on evidence after a sexual assault is written for her.
These pages are written for her rather than for you, and are meant to be handed over or sent as a link.
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.
Administered by the Attorney General under Chapter 56B. Current limits:
A caution on all of these figures before you quote them to anyone. The $50,000 aggregate, the $5,000 relocation ceiling, the $3,333 bereavement figure, the $1,500 emergency award and the $3,000 tattoo limit are in the statute. The 60 sessions, the $700 weekly wage rate, the $300 weekly dependent care rate, the $2,250 cleanup limit and the $6,500 funeral limit are set by Attorney General rule and change without legislation. Check the Attorney General’s pages for the current numbers. One caution on relocation, because it comes up constantly and the rule is not what people assume. A sexual assault survivor assaulted in her own residence qualifies for relocation directly under Article 56B.106(c). A survivor assaulted somewhere else must come through Article 56B.106(c-1), which requires that the expense be necessary to protect the health or safety of the victim or a family or household member. Both routes exist. They are not the same route.
The application deadline is three years from the conduct, extendable for good cause, with separate rules for child victims and for documented incapacity.
We have written the full detail, with the statutory citations, on our page about Texas crime victims’ compensation.
We take calls from advocates, nurses, counselors and victim services staff who are trying to answer a question for someone, with no expectation that anyone is referring a case. If you need to know whether a set of facts is worth a survivor’s time, ask. A question about a survivor’s options is not a referral and is not treated as one.
Call 713-521-0059.
That the exam is free and does not require a police report. That the state will pay for counseling, and lost wages, and sometimes a move. That there is no 72-hour rule. That the deadline to sue depends on the facts and should be treated as two years until a lawyer says otherwise. And that if this happened at a place of business or where she lived, there may be a claim against that business that would pay for the things the state’s ceiling does not reach.
Yes. You can ask us how something works without identifying anyone, and we will not ask.
Yes. Article 56B.107(d) provides that receiving a forensic medical examination is sufficient evidence that the victim substantially cooperated with the investigation.
No. That figure circulates in training materials and is not in the statute.
Yes, for evidence collected on or after 1 December 2025, under Government Code Section 420.0736. The results come back to her through the tracking system and are not compared against DNA databases or used in a criminal case.
No. Section 420.072 permits disclosure where it is necessary to comply with Chapter 261 of the Family Code or Chapter 48 of the Human Resources Code. The privilege is hers; the reporting duty is yours, and it is separate.
When the assault happened on someone’s property or premises, when there is an employer or institution involved, or when evidence is on a deletion clock. The call is free and commits her to nothing.
