Every year, on the first Wednesday in April we hold Denim Day Paint Night.  We want to help educate our community about sexual assault. Join us for a fun night of Denim Painting this event is appropriate for all ages and will be presented by The Medical Center Foundation of Hartford, a non-profit that serves Washington County.    

What is Denim Day?

Denim Day grew out of a 1989 Italian Supreme Court decision that overturned a rape conviction because the victim wore tight jeans. An 18-year-old girl is picked up by her married 45-year-old driving instructor for her very first lesson. He takes her to an isolated road, pulls her out of the car, wrestles her out of one leg of her jeans and forcefully rapes her. Threatened with death if she tells anyone, he makes her drive the car home. Later that night she tells her parents, and they help and support her to press charges. The perpetrator gets arrested and is prosecuted. He is convicted of rape and sentenced to jail.

He appeals the sentence. The case makes it all the way to the Italian Supreme Court. Within a matter of days, the case against the driving instructor is overturned, dismissed, and the perpetrator released. In a statement by the Chief Judge, he argued, “because the victim wore very, very tight jeans, she had to help him remove them, and by removing the jeans it was no longer rape but consensual sex.”

Enraged by the verdict, within a matter of hours the women in the Italian Parliament launched into immediate action and protested by wearing jeans to work. This call to action motivated and emboldened the California Senate and Assembly to do the same. People all over the world were outraged, and wearing jeans became an international symbol of protest against erroneous and destructive attitudes and myths surrounding sexual assault.

Please join us at this event. Cost is $10 / person.  Proceeds benefit the Washington County SANE (sexual assault nurse examiner) Program.

Medical Center Foundation of Hartford, which supports Washington County’s SANE programs, helps victims and is proud to help bring the community together in this family-friendly, social-distancing event.

Call Sarah at 262.670.7568 for more information. 

Local businesses in the community will have specially made Denim Day boards that contain more information about the event and the work that is done with the money raised to help educate our SANE nurses in Hartford and West Bend.