More than 11,000 unprocessed forensic exam kits collected from sexual assault victims were found abandoned in storage back in 2009, according to Detroit’s WXYZ News. Some of the kits had been there since the 1980s.?Only 1,600 of them have so far been processed, but that 1,600 has identified over 100 serial rapists.
Marisky Hargitay, of Law and Order: SVU fame, is teaming up with Wayne County prosecutor, Kym Worthy, in an effort to call attention to the unconscionable?number of sexual assault exam kits that have gone unprocessed across the country. This follows a June 2014 proposal by President Obama, backed as a bi-partisan effort in Congress, to allocate federal grant money to addressing the number of unprocessed kits. The New York Times recently indicated?the trend of failing to process these kits as showing “contempt for victims, public safety and justice.”
This is especially infuriating considering that, in 13 of 50 states, victims are billed for portions of those exams. After experiencing the revictimization of submitting to exams after an assault, sexual assault survivors are reminded over and over of the attack during the healing process when bills arrive in the mail, and they are forced to pay for these services. To think that, after all of this, the exams led to nothing – no justice, no investigation, no arrests – is unimaginably frustrating.
Hargitay, founder of the Joyful Heart Foundation, an organization that assists victims of sexual assault and domestic violence, found the news of these unprocessed kits and their results shocking and?expressed her astonishment?in a press conference:
?I was in shock. I was outraged and I just assumed kits were being tested.?Testing rape kits is vital for keeping rapists off the street.”
?The number of rapes that could have been prevented had these kits been processed immediately and the perpetrators arrested in a timely manner are astonishing. According to Addicting Info:
“Some of the serial rapists had gone on to rape again in 23 other US states, crimes that would have been prevented if these rape kits had been processed.”
This is but one of the reasons why only three out of every 100 reported sexual assaults ever result in jail time for the accused.
