Languishing evidence in more than 100,000 sexual assault cases around the US has been sent for DNA testing with money from a New York prosecutor and federal authorities, spurring more than 1,000 arrests and hundreds of convictions in three years, officials say.
It is estimated that another 155,000 or more sexual assault evidence kits still await testing, and thousands of results have yet to be linked to suspects. Many who have been identified cannot be prosecuted because of legal time limits and other factors.
Still, the effort is a start at correcting “an absolute travesty of justice,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr said on Tuesday while releasing results of his US$38 million investment in testing — all outside his own turf.
“That backlog not only undermined justice and the perception, and reality, of equality — it also made every woman and every American less safe,” he said.
Police and lawmakers have faced growing calls to eliminate what is known as the rape kit backlog — swabs and samples collected in sexual assault cases, but never tested for DNA.
Victims’ advocates see the untested kits as signs that sexual assaults were not taken seriously enough.
Vance, who took office after New York City cleared its own testing backlog, and the US Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance have worked in tandem since 2015 to help other places tackle theirs.
The two agencies have paid to send years-old kits to labs from dozens of states and communities, ranging from Flint, Michigan, to Mobile, Alabama, to Las Vegas.
One of the kits sat untested for 15 years in Tracy Rios’ case, even though she had given police the name of the then-friend she accused of luring her into a vacant apartment and sexually assaulting her in 2002 in Tempe, Arizona.
Police said they could not charge him based on her word, and then she under went a rape kit exam, but the investigation soon stalled, she said.
“I lost faith in the system. I thought they didn’t care,” she said on Tuesday.
A message was left for Tempe police about the case.
Two years ago, she was told her rape kit had finally been tested, with money from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and police were pursuing her case anew.
“It was amazing to know I was going to get justice,” said Rios, whose attacker is now serving a seven-year sentence for sexual assault.
Some cities have mobilized on their own to test years-old rape kits.
However, the big grants from Manhattan and Washington “infused this movement with resources,” said Ilse Knecht of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a sexual assault victims’ advocacy group.
The backlog built up over decades, partly due to the cost of tests that can run US$1,000 or more.
However, victims’ advocates also say that many sexual assault cases simply got sidelined over the years by police and prosecutors who unduly disbelieved or downplayed victims’ allegations.
New York City worked through a 17,000-case backlog from 2000 to 2003.
Vance, a Democrat elected in 2009, offered other places money to attack their own backlogs and negotiated discount rates with labs.
His program — financed with US$38 million from settlements in banking-related cases — dispatched more than 55,000 rape kits to testing labs. The results have yielded 186 arrests and 64 convictions, with more investigations and prosecutions still under way, Vance’s report said.
In Battle Creek, Michigan, arrests included a suspect in the 2013 sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl.
Authorities had his name from the start — he was a family friend — but her rape kit was not tested until Vance’s grant program helped Michigan wipe out a 3,400-kit backlog.
The woman, now 19, said she was initially angry when authorities told her they were ready to prosecute three years after the assault.
She had gotten on with her life, helped by counseling.
She ultimately agreed to testify, and her attacker pleaded guilty and was sentenced to up to 30 years in prison.
“I feel proud of myself” for going forward with the case, the woman said on Tuesday, adding that she does not feel scared to walk around town anymore.
Another nearly 45,000 rape kits have been sent to labs through the justice department program, and have produced nearly 899 prosecutions, and 498 convictions and plea bargains, data provided on Monday showed.
The department over three years has put US$154 million into its sexual assault kit initiative, which includes other things besides testing.
Authorities and victims’ advocates say arrests are not the only measure of the impact of getting the tests done.
“It means that the criminal justice system cares what happened to you,” Knecht said.
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