Sunday, May 31, 2015
Associated Press
The evidence piled up for years, abandoned in police property rooms, warehouses and crime labs. Now, thousands of sexual-assault kits are giving up their secrets – and rapists who’ve long remained free may finally face justice.
A dramatic shift is taking hold across the country as police and prosecutors scramble to process these kits and use DNA matches to track down predators, many of whom have attacked more women while evidence of their crimes sat in storage.
“There’s definitely momentum,” says Sarah Haacke Byrd, managing director of the Joyful Heart Foundation, an advocacy group working on the issue. “In the last year, we really are seeing the tide turn where federal and state governments are offering critically needed leadership and critically needed resources to fix the problem.”
In Cleveland, the county prosecutor’s office has indicted more than 300 rape suspects since 2013, based on newly tested DNA evidence from old kits. Ultimately, 1,000 are expected to be charged.
In Houston, authorities recently cleared a backlog of nearly 6,700 kits, some decades old. The project turned up 850 matches in a national DNA database.
There’s a new urgency, too, among lawmakers. Legislators in more than 20 states are considering — and in some cases, passing — measures that include counting all kits and setting deadlines for submitting and processing DNA evidence.
The high-profile campaign also is getting a big financial boost: at least $76 million for testing, prosecution and reforms.
It’s too soon to know how much testing will cost. But in some cases, it’s too late for justice because statutes of limitations have expired. In others, investigators will have to dig through old files and track down suspects and rape survivors. It’s an enormously time-consuming venture.
This new spotlight on rape kits stems from the work of groups such as Joyful Heart, the willingness of survivors to speak out, investigative media reports and the attention of political leaders from statehouses to the White House.
Two frequently cited reasons for the backlog are money — it can cost $500 to $1500 to test each kit — and technology. DNA wasn’t widely used until the mid- to late 1990s.