Rape kits stuck on a shelf

In 2009, 11,341 untested sexual assault kits — the results of an hours-long process that collects evidence from the body of a rape victim — were found during a routine tour of a Detroit police storage warehouse, some dating back to 1984.

[Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy] and her team started the long and laborious process of testing those kits, investigating the crimes, and prosecuting the perpetrators — and launching Enough SAID, an effort to raise the money to complete the work.

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Ten thousand rape kits tested. One hundred twenty-seven convictions won, 1,947 cases investigated, 817 serial rapists identified.

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In one city, in one county, in one state, we had 11,341. That means a couple of things: Number one, this problem is a lot more pervasive than people could ever have imagined. Number two, (that's) on top of the very low rate that people report in the first place. That means there is much more sexual assault going on, that it's much more pervasive than people think. I think nationally the number is about 20% of rapes that are reported, and when you get to the prosecution stage it's very, very little ... that's very sobering, very sad and very pathetic.

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There are estimated to be 400,000 untested rape kits in the country.

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A rapist rapes on average seven to 11 times before they're caught. ... Of our set of 817 ... over 50 of them have 10 to 15 hits apiece.

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There has [to] be a (sexual assault kit) protocol, and there is now in the Detroit Police Department ... Police officers [no longer] make that decision, they just all go [to be tested].

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Legislation that was signed by Gov. Rick Snyder in 2014 ... created ... standards for when kits get to the lab — 14 days to take it to the lab and 90 days to turn it around, assuming lab has the resources. And that's statewide.

The other huge change that we made here in Wayne County ... is the training. Training officers on how you're supposed to treat victims ... about the neurobiology of trauma. When a potential victim comes into the police department and is laughing or has a flat affect, it doesn't mean they weren't raped. We reviewed many many police reports where the officers dismissed (victims) because they didn't act the way they thought they should act.

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They just closed cases, even cases where I think they believed the victim ... They closed cases because the women had worked as prostitutes or had mental illness issues or had substance abuse.

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One of the reasons we have these untested rape kits ... and I can use Detroit as an example, 86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color. You're not going to find too many blond-haired, blue eyed white women ... Because their kits are treated differently, their cases are solved. That's just the way it is in this country.  [...]  People may not want to admit it, but I've seen it throughout my career and I know it's true.

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[W]hen you get these kits tested, it can help exonerate someone, potentially. Some of these cases had already been tried. What I talk about all the time, is just in our kits, in one state, in one city, they have tentacles to crime scenes in 39 other states. And finally, the fact that once these hits get into CODIS (the FBI's Combined DNA Index System database), law enforcement can solve more than just sexual assault. They can solve homicide, can solve breaking and entering, because the crimes in other states we're talking about are not just sexual assault.

  Detroit Free Press