Survey on Ohio AG’s rape kit initiative reveals inconsistent follow-ups

October 21, 2018 at 6:00a.m.

By RACHEL DISSELL

The Plain Dealer/

Special to The Vindicator

CLEVELAND

Testing rape kits is the law in Ohio. But following up on the

results of those tests is not.

Outside of Cleveland, which has logged convictions in 370 rape kit cases since 2013, only a few dozen other cases across the state have made it to a courtroom.

A survey of police agencies statewide, conducted by The Plain Dealer and community volunteers, found that in many cases, police departments and sheriff’s offices are not reinvestigating thousands of older cases tested in recent years, even when DNA results identify possible suspects or linked cases.

Agencies that have followed up cases say victims are often reluctant to have their cases reopened or recant allegations, if they can locate them at all. When police do have a victim willing to

cooperate, prosecutors often decline to file charges or present the case to a grand jury.

The Plain Dealer, with the help of more than 100 community volunteers, attempted to survey all 294 law-enforcement agencies that sent in rape kits for testing as part of the Sexual Assault Kit Testing Initiative, which kicked off in late 2011 when Attorney General Mike DeWine issued an “open call” for the more than 800 law-enforcement agencies in Ohio to send any kits that had not previously been tested for DNA.

Testing became mandatory in 2015, and the project continued until February when the attorney general’s office announced that state labs had completed testing on 13,931 kits. Those tests yielded 5,052 DNA hits or matches in CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System, as of Sept. 18.

More than half, 152 agencies, responded to The Plain Dealer’s 25-question survey or provided information to reporters who collaborated in reporting this story.

Those agencies surveyed contributed 7,316, more than half, of the rape kits submitted statewide for testing.

Finding a DNA profile in a rape kit doesn’t mean a case is solved. It’s a starting point for an investigation – one that involves tracking down a victim, potential suspects, old police reports and medical records.

A DNA hit might provide the name of a potential suspect, based on a criminal profile collected by law enforcement after an arrest for a felony or a past conviction.

Or, it might provide a link to another unsolved case where the lab found the same DNA profile of an unknown person.

What The survey revealed

Sixty-five, or less than half, of the agencies that responded said they had started reinvestigating cases.

When agencies got DNA results, they were more likely to take another look at the cases. Of 111 departments that received DNA results, 58 said they reinvestigated.

It doesn’t appear that, for most departments, staffing concerns are driving those decisions.

Seventy percent of the departments that are reinvestigating “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that they had enough personnel to handle the investigations. And even more, 81 percent, of those that decided not to follow up had no staffing concerns.

The survey also revealed that not all departments followed the 2015 mandatory testing law.

About 15 percent of departments that responded said that they picked which kits to send, and didn’t send ones from cases where victims had previously declined to prosecute, cases that had already been prosecuted or kits connected to cases where a suspect’s identity was known to police.

FOLLOWING UP

So why did some departments decide not to reinvestigate?

In some cases, departments submitted kits related to cases that had already been prosecuted, and for most, the results confirmed the identity of the person arrested or convicted.

The most common reasons departments did cite are:

Victims declined to cooperate or prosecute after the original report was made.

There was a determination that the victim lied about some aspect of the rape to police, or the original report was false.

Testing results confirmed the identity of a suspect already known to police.

“I’m not surprised,” said Rosa Beltre, executive director of the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence. “There’s still a lot of education that needs to occur within law enforcement.”

How departments made decisions to follow up, or not to, is worth exploring. Ohio lawmakers likely are to consider adding new provisions to the current law that would require the electronic tracking of rape kits and to allow victims to access the information.

DeWine has promoted the creation of such a system, which exists in several other states. He recently appointed an advisory committee to look at how a similar system in Ohio might work.

As a part of that discussion, officials need to consider setting statewide standards for training and some form of accountability, perhaps tied to funding, paired with any further legal changes, said Beltre, who sits on the committee.

“If it isn’t mandatory, it won’t happen,” she said. “We need to ask, ‘How can we make sure survivors are believed and responded to the right way, whether they live in a city or a rural area?”

INCONSISTENT INVESTIGATION

Departments that did decide to reinvestigate DNA results often did so in very different ways.

Some decided to look into every hit or DNA match. Others decided to reopen only “stranger” cases, and to not take a fresh look at cases where the victim named the suspect at the time the crime was reported.

Often, departments viewed DNA results to already-known suspects as not helpful.

That type of decision-making is common for police, and was common among those in the survey, though emerging research shows it may be flawed.

Rapists are far more likely than previously believed to “crossover” and target both people they know and strangers, said Rachel Lovell, a senior researcher at the Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education at Case Western Reserve University.

Offenders look to exploit victims’ vulnerabilities, whether it’s a person they know or a stranger, said Lovell, who has headed the Begun Center’s research on sexual-assault kit testing.

That means a person might attack an unknown victim walking alone at one point, and then at a different time rape a child who is a relative.

Sexual-assault evidence should be tested in all cases where it’s collected, Lovell said, because it allows for the system to link rapes to each other.

Police also need to follow up on those connections, and they should start by examining the suspect as thoroughly as possible, and not only when the victim has agreed to prosecute, Lovell said.

That also should include tracking cases where a “known suspect” is linked to multiple reports, which can bolster an investigation, she said.

But only if the police follow up.

SERIAL RAPE CASES

Few of the agencies that completed the survey reported having potential serial cases linked by DNA to reinvestigate.

But the links do exist.

At least 313 forensic DNA profiles found while testing the older rape kits belonged to serial offenders, defined as three or more offenses, that connected to 1,175 crimes, most of which were sexual assaults, according to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

DeWine, in the past and in a recent interview, said all his office can do is urge police agencies to do thorough follow-up investigations every time they get DNA results from the lab.

The AG’s office has sent out letters multiple times to chiefs and sheriffs emphasizing the importance of following up and asking for the results in cases, DeWine said.

Lab staff or BCI agents have, in cases where hits indicate a potential pattern of attacks, reached out to departments specifically to offer help.

“Any department that wants our assistance in putting these [rape investigations] together, we are happy to do that,” DeWine said. “Willing and anxious to do that.”

Ultimately, training on how to investigate sex crimes and how to use DNA hits will need to be a part of required classes at the Ohio Peace Officers Training Academy so it becomes the norm, DeWine said.

In the interim, the attorney general’s office offered training to educate departments on the “lessons learned” from places such as Cleveland where a task force is investigating thousands of DNA hits and has matched and is reviewing more than 6,000 cased from the city and its suburbs.

Cleveland’s task force includes investigators, prosecutors and victim advocates who work cooperatively to follow up on cases. Since 2013, the work has led to indictments of 700 defendants.

Some of those defendants were identified through DNA. In other cases, a more thorough investigation than was originally done resulted in an indictment, often in cases bolstered by multiple reports against the same attacker over time.

Most police agencies that completed the survey or talked with reporters said the cases they reinvestigated did not result in criminal charges or indictments, with fewer than 133 total indictments reported outside of Cleveland and only 43 convictions, though that number is a snapshot based on when the survey was completed.

The departments cited many reasons for this, including victims or suspects who had died, expiration of the statute of limitations for prosecution or a police determination that the original report was false.

Two reasons stood out as the most common:

Victims were hard to find and reluctant to cooperate.

Even if victims decided to cooperate, county or city prosecutors declined to file charges or present cases to a grand jury.

Julie Wilson, spokeswoman for the Hamilton County prosecutor and a trial lawyer, told Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Anne Saker that especially after the passage of time, a DNA match isn’t necessarily good news for a sexual-assault victim. In most instances, the victim knows the assailant, or the victim feels shame that the assault happened after a night of drinking. Regardless of specifics, no one wants to relive the experience before a judge or jury, Wilson said.

“Even if you have what lay people would call a lot of evidence, still, for the victim, coming to court is very traumatic, to recount what probably was the worst thing that ever happened to her,” she said.

PROSECUTION NOT ALWAYS PREFERRED

The criminal-justice process of reporting a rape and going to court is not going to be the path all survivors choose, and that needs to be acknowledged and understood, Beltre, from the Ohio Alliance, said.

Survivors shouldn’t feel forced to comply, she said. But connections with community-based agencies are essential to creating a better environment for making these decisions.

And she said when it comes to older cases, some of the reluctance to participate is because a person doesn’t want to relive the trauma. It also could be because of biases they faced from a detective or department when they initially reported the crime.

“This has to be a continuous conversation of how we improve this process. It can’t just be a one-time deal or a political stand,” she said.

Working through the backlog of older investigations and testing results provides law enforcement with an opportunity to look at the past, and to keep what seemed to work and change what wasn’t, Lovell, the Begun researcher, said.

The willingness to change the way cases are investigated could prevent rapes and lead to safer communities, she said.

Rachel Dissell is a reporter for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. Contact her at rdissell@plaind.com.