CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A new federal law set to take effect next year aims to make it easier for rape victims to get physical exams as soon as possible after an attack.

The reason behind the law is that police and rape crisis counselors said about one out of three victims of sexual assault never report what happened.

But Eyewitness News reporter Mark Becker discovered the new law has police and hospitals here in Charlotte scrambling to find ways to make it work without compromising the case in court.

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It's been seven years, but “Vicki” hasn't forgotten the fear and utter helplessness that came after she was raped.

“When I got to the hospital, I told them I'd been raped and I didn't know where to go or what to do, but I needed help,” she said.

Kellie Harney, a nurse practitioner who works with rape victims in a special suite at Presbyterian Hospital, said that in most cases, just getting to the hospital is the most difficult part.

She said at Presbyterian medical personnel do an extensive exam within 72 hours of a rape and collect fluids and other evidence in a box called a rape kit, which will often be the key to prosecuting the case.

But Harney said for some victims the prospect of reporting their attack to police can be overwhelming, so under the new law a victim will be able to have a rape kit collected without getting the police involved right away.

The problem is that no one knows exactly how they'll handle the evidence after that.

“Right now, hospitals do not have the ability to store and to maintain the type of custody that's needed. Those are the types of challenges we face right now,” Harney said.

Sgt. Darrell Price, who supervises the rape unit at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, said he thinks it’s a great law, but there wasn’t much direction given with it. He’s already had discussions with local hospitals to try to help them come up with a plan for handling evidence before the law takes effect next year.

Right now, the plan is to hold those rape kits in coolers in the police department's evidence room, but those coolers are almost full already, and that's just one of the potential problems they'll have to solve.

“We have a lot of things to do in our department to figure out how we're going to take a kit with no case attached to it, with no victim's name, and store it as evidence where we don't even have a case on it,” Price said.

No one knows how many victims will go to hospitals and have rape kits collected without contacting police, but detectives and the hospitals are planning for between 30 and 50 a year.

Police and hospitals have five months to figure out how to make it work so that the evidence that's collected in those cases can make it into court if it's needed.

“We want to protect their privacy, and if this helps patients come forward and report, this is something we'll be prepared to handle for our community and our patients,” said Angie Armstrong, an emergency room nurse at Carolinas Medical Center.

One of the other issues they're wrestling with is how long to hold onto the kits. The federal law isn't clear about that and leaves it up to each particular jurisdiction.

The cost of those exams will be picked up by the state's victim compensation fund.