About

Alexa Benson began to study music at an early age. Piano, violin, flute, and accordion; finally settling on voice as her primary instrument. Through the process of learning language through music, she also developed a love of culture and is a consummate traveler.
After receiving her Bachelors in Music from Chapman University, she changed career paths and began working on her Nursing degree. While working as a nurse in the emergency department at Harbor UCLA, she received her certificate as a Women’s Healthcare Nurse Practitioner from the Women’s Healthcare Nurse Practitioner Program and began working as a sexual assault forensic nurse. A year later, Harbor UCLA began utilizing Nurse Practitioners and she started the Medical Screening Exam NP group and also completed her MSN at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). The research that was conducted for her thesis led to the publishing of the original article “Reliability of Female genital injury detection after sexual assault” in the Journal of Forensic Nursing.
Immediately after graduating from CSULB, she entered the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and completed her Ph.D. after developing the vulvar acute genital injury score (VAGIS). Dr. Benson has recently completed the final revisions for Medical Response to Adult Sexual Assault Chapter 4, "The Sexual Assault Exam Components and Documentation" (second edition) with Linda Ledray.