I was in LA last week doing some reporting for my new book and it gave me a chance to listen to the radio as I waited out the traffic. Traffic sucks, but damn do I wish I had more occasions to listen to the radio. In any case, I heard this story about Human Rights Watch investigator Sarah Tofte's report on the huge back log of untested rape kits in LA County. An excerpt from Tofte's article:
Through dozens of interviews with police officers, public officials, DNA analysts, rape treatment providers and rape victims, I found that as of March 1, 2009, there were at least 12,669 untested rape kits sitting in storage facilities. In those cases, officers never sent the kits along for forensic testing.Of these untested kits, at least 1,218 are from unsolved cases in which the attacker was a stranger to the victim. And 499 kits are attached to cases that have passed the 10-year statute of limitations for rape in California, making it impossible to prosecute the alleged assailants even if they were to be identified. Under California law, if those 499 kits had been opened within two years of the attack, the statute would no longer apply. Thousands more rape kits were destroyed untested.
The backlog grew even as the police and sheriff's departments received millions of federal dollars from the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant, a program the U.S. Congress created to address rape kit backlogs. But the effect of the program is blunted by the fact that grantees can use the money to test any kind of DNA backlog.
File this under serendipity: that same night that I heard this story on the radio I went to a benefit for Peace Over Violence, an LA-based organization, and guess who was there? That's right, Sarah Tofte. We didn't get much of a chance to chat, but she did say that there is cause for concern in Georgia, Illinois, and plenty of other states across the country.
Seems like grounds for a major campaign, doesn't it? Does anyone know about your local police dept.'s backlog of rape kits? How can we organize to get these kits tested?
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What. The. Fuck. How is this even legal?
It's about money. The bad economy has hit very hard in SoCal, and police and sheriff's departments have cut staff and forensic resources to the bone.
That is why I've been trying to get interest going in a campaign to eliminate the statute of limitations in rape cases with a viable DNA profile. That would give cash-strapped departments more time. It's not an ideal solution, but at least a somewhat practical one.
I find it almost ironic that this is going on and yet we're yelling at afghanistan for the legal rape case.
This is a serious, serious issue. It's not as bad as the legal rape law, but it is letting people get away with the unthinkable. And likely go on to commit the crime again, if we're honest with ourselves.
There's a special place in hell for whoever decided this was an acceptable way to deal with a budget crisis.
I remember the first time I actually heard about this problem was during the VP debate when Biden brought it up. He's a huge advocate for getting those kits tested and that's when I realized how much I loved him.
But one would think that after the horror of being raped and being brave enough to go to the police and report it and go to the hospital to get a rape kit (all of which can just be a horrible ordeal)...that they'd actually get it tested! What a slap in the face.
this is bullshit and it makes me really scared. I mean if something ever happened to me i would expect it to be taken care of.. so if its not being handled at all..
cant they hire a separate .. sector just for this? wouldnt the president want to do something about it.. at the least .. fund it? thats not okay to let it pass 10 years without testing it. thats not okay at all.
I live in Oceanside, CA and I imagine some pretty sleazy things happen here.. I dont even want to think that we have a backlog on rape kits.. i wonder if this is a nationwide issue.
Shit. Give me the kits.. I'll test them my dang self!
The overall number is less shocking than this one:
"Of these untested kits, at least 1,218 are from unsolved cases. . ."
I would guess that many of the overall number are cases that were resolved without needed the tests examined, with plea bargained results. But any significant backlog of tests from unsolved cases????
I wonder what the time factors are? Like, what is the median delay and how many are processed in week vs. how many received/prepared in a week?
There are several issues to tackle prior to the backlog of cases at the forensic laboratories.
1) Proper storage at the agency investigating the crime. Some agencies have little more than a family sized refrigerator/freezer in which to store biological evidence. The samples can be degraded before they are even transported to the county/regional laboratory.
2) Low staffing levels at forensic laboratories. See the National Academy of Science (NAS) Report : Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States : A Path Forward. This offers information regarding forensic analysis conducted in a law enforcement agency laboratory and in an independent laboratory.
I work at a rape crisis program in Southwest Ohio. A few weeks ago, I attended "Sexual Assault Issues Group" meeting, composed of a variety of professionals who deal with sexual assault, such as law enforcement, people in the office of ethics and conflict resolution in the local university, therapists, and our rape crisis staff. We were discussing this issue as well as the Jane Doe option of anonymous reporting (getting a rape evidence collection exam without speaking to police) to preserve the option of pressing charges later. I remarked that this would be a great way to deal with serial rapists (as the research of the amazing Dr. David Lisak and others have show, the majority of rapists are) because a victim might be more willing to press charges if a perpetrator's DNA had shown up in multiple cases and other victims were pressing charges. A detective remarked that this was wishful thinking on my part because the police departments have to pay for the testing each individual kit themselves and they would not order a kit to be tested unless they were sure they were going to prosecute a case.
C'mon Joe Biden, let's get some legislation through to get federal funding to resolve this issue before more and more cases have their statue of limitations pass.
California NOW is going to be working pretty intensely this year on getting this issue resolved statewide. The LAPD already has federal funds for backlog reduction, it's just a matter of prioritizing how those funds are spent. We're also working at the local level on getting LA to prioritize funding for processing rape kits. There's also the possibility of getting a federal move to allow VAWA funds to be used for reducing rape kit backlogs.
In California right now there's a bill proposed by Assemblymembers Portantino and Brownley to require that these kits be processed in a timely manor. The bill has a hearing on April 14, so Californians should contact your Assembly member to support this bill. It's AB 1017, and more information can be found here
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=ab_1017&sess=CUR&house=B&author=portantino
Wow.
I know someone who just got raped in Cali and I would be so incredibly upset if it ended up not being even opened.
Everyone deserves justice from their government and rape is a crime that needs to be taken seriously.
I work as a victim advocate in southern Maine, and from what I can tell, we don't currently have a backlog on rape kits. In fact, I did a hospital accompaniment with a victim a few weeks ago, and was told it would take about two weeks for the kit to be tested.
The idea of kits not being processed, makes me livid. Going through the process of completing a rape kit is incredibly traumatic, and it takes a massive amount of courage to do. I don't know how I could even explain to a victim that there was a chance that their evidence might languish somewhere, preventing their case from moving forward or reaching a conclusion.
I'm going to reach out to Angela Rose with PAVE, promoting awareness, victim empowerment. PAVE is an awesome organization that led the rally about the woman who couldn't use the word rape at her rape trial.
Maybe we can get something going there. I can no longer be silent!
hey girls.
let me explain a couple of things. i am from hungary. we had a case from 2007, when 2 policemen raped a girl, while other 3 policemen watching. (stopped her as regular trafic control) this girl had the courage to report the rape. it was deliberately falsely investigated, traces vanished during investigation, the policemen were set free, they insulted and stalked the girl afterwards, and right now, the girl might be convicted for false accusations! even though the girl was said to have ptsd by forensic psychiatrists!... the girl had to face 5-6 court visits, police hearings, forensic psychiatric hearings, she was said to be a whore by the policemen's lawyer, every aspect of her life was given out to the media, and nobody at all cared, that the policemen, whose job is to protect us, raped a girl on duty!!!
upon this, i think, that the situation must be the very same in the us. and i would like to as us forensics, how they can sleep at night, knowing, that they did not do everything in their power to prevent those 12669 rapists to rape even more women. because there is a 99% chance, that the rapist will rape again, and even more women will suffer.
i have a rape recovery blog with other hungarian feminist girls, www.megeroszakoltak.blog.hu
it is horrible, what kind of rape stories we receive. and it is even more horrible, that 90% of the commenters blame the victim, therefore we have changed the blog to pre-moderation. it is very annoying to see, how the victim-blamers are complaining for free speech after commenting "stupid whore" and things like this.
and it is ridiculous, and even more horrible, that you in the us, and me in hungary, we are in the world's better part, where women have right to their own bodies!
awful.
:(((
and we (hungarians) have anti-marriage-rape law only since 1997!... :((( (wonder, why i don't want to marry?)