The only type of sexual assault on which the UCR currently collects data is “forcible rape,” defined as “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.” That definition excludes a number of crimes, including rapes where the victim was drugged or under the influence of alcohol, and all male victims of sexual assault.

Given the definition’s exceedingly narrow scope, many sexual assaults are not counted as rapes in yearly federal reports that are used to track crime rates in the United States. This under-reporting misleads the public about the prevalence of rape and results in fewer resources for both preventing future sexual violence and supporting survivors.

In mid-September, members of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), including representatives of police agencies from various cities, met with FBI officials and survivors’ advocates to discuss making the definition more inclusive. The proposed change must now go through an FBI working group later this month and an FBI advisory group in December.

Campaigning by advocates and consensus among local law enforcement agencies created the impetus to change the UCR definition. A recent PERF study reported that 80% of 306 responding police agencies believe the FBI definition is inadequate. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey has spearheaded the effort within PERF. He testified about the under-reporting of rape before the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs in September 2010.

We are hopeful that the FBI will take a big step toward bringing healing and justice to survivors of sexual violence and make this much-needed and long-awaited change to the UCR. Thank you to the advocates and law enforcement officials who have worked to make this change possible.

Every year, tens of thousands of individuals report a sexual assault to the police. After an assault, a survivor undergoes an invasive exam that lasts between four and six hours to collect DNA and forensic evidence, which then goes into a “rape kit.”

The federal government estimates that over 200,000 untested kits are currently sitting untouched in storage facilities nationwide. Each untested kit represents a missed opportunity for healing and justice for a survivor. Eliminating the backlog would send a powerful message to survivors that their cases matter and that the criminal justice system has not forgotten them.

Joyful Heart would use the $1 million award to continue and enhance its efforts to end the rape kit backlog in cities across the country. We plan to create replicable victim-centered best practices, which will foster trusting and open relationships between survivors and responders; to completely overhaul endthebacklog.org, the only site dedicated to raising awareness about the backlog; to deepen our partnership with the City of Detroit and other jurisdictions across the U.S. to help end local backlogs; and to use additional funds to test backlogged kits that might otherwise go untested.

Please take a moment to vote for Joyful Heart. $1 million would go a long way in helping us to bring healing and justice to survivors of sexual violence.  To learn more, please visit www.joyfulheartfoundation.org/chase.

Polly Poskin, Executive Director of ICASA, shows an audience a rape kit. Photography by: José Moré/Chicago News Cooperative

Sarah Tofte: Polly, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me today. Let’s talk a bit about how you got interested in working on violence against women issues.

Polly Poskin: In college, I focused on women’s history for my graduate degree. That was a time when we were learning about the women’s movement. So much of the focus was improving access to education, improving employment opportunities and expanding daycare. And we got into reproductive rights. Our women’s movement focused on educational opportunities for women, equal pay, child-bearing and child-caring issues and the right of a woman to control her body. We never talked about domestic violence and rape. I wasn’t aware of those issues in 1970.

ST: So, when did violence against women come into your work?

PP: I remember the New York Radical Feminists held a “Speak Out” on rape in New York City in 1971. I came to understand that if women were to gain equality and be free to move about safely in this culture, we were going to have to have sexual safety. If women were to feel liberated, they needed to be safe. And I realized that if we don’t end violence in women’s lives, women were never going to be safe, free and even remotely equal to men in all the areas of life that we might like to pursue.

ST: Once you decided to commit yourself to this work, where did you go?

PP: The opportunities were not huge. There were rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters, but there was no funding for them. Then, in 1980, President Reagan signed into law the rape crisis services and rape prevention program that contained federal funds designated for rape crisis centers. That helped open up the field for more people to be employed, including me.

ST: Tell me about the early days of your work on sexual violence. What were the challenges?

PP: Well, if we didn’t have bona fide physical evidence that could somehow substantiate the woman’s report of rape, then there was going to be no support for–and no response to–a rape victim by law enforcement and the criminal justice system. In the early days of my work, many of the women coming forward were sexually abused as children or as young teenagers and, now, decades later, were coming forward to get help from us and to tell us what had happened to them. As there became more permission for women to report rape and as women realized they could get the support of victim advocates and have some community back-up, more women came forward in the immediate moments after a rape. There was growing focus on what physical evidence existed in order to go forward with a case. Women began to believe they could report a rape right after it happened when there would still be physical evidence that could be used at trial.

ST: I have been doing some research lately on the origins of rape kit examinations in the United States and I learned that Illinois is considered the birthplace of the rape kit. Was it around this time that the rape kit started to emerge as a good law enforcement tool?

PP: A victim’s rights advocate helped develop the kit with a detective in or around 1975-1976. Before the rape kit existed, there was very little physical evidence collected from rape cases—or, if it was collected, it was not always as useful as it needed to be. There were storage issues and contamination issues and inconsistency in analysis. It was a bit of a mess.

The importance of the rape kit rose as reporting rates increased and more victims came forward right after a rape occurred. In the mid 80s, an investigative reporter in Chicago discovered that police were hoarding rape kits in the trunks of police officers’ cars. The kits never even made it to the police station. These kits had been collected and because there was never any pursuit of the investigation, the officers never took the kits to the station or the lab. That story opened the floodgates to talk about the significance of rape kits, the lack of law enforcement compliance in delivering the kits to the lab and the role of state’s attorneys’ offices who too infrequently requested lab results from the kits.

Since the first rape kit was introduced, we have constantly made tweaks and improvements as our knowledge base increases about what works and what doesn’t for victims and for evidentiary value. We worked hard to improve the emergency room response by doing training with hospitals and law enforcement. We tried to bridge the relationship between cops and hospitals so they would communicate better with one another.

ST: Why was the forensic piece so important to get right?

PP: As to the crime of rape, our society does not believe women simply based on their word. So, especially in those years before the rape laws were changed, we really, really needed corroborating physical evidence in order to get a prosecutor to take the case. We needed to have evidence to substantiate the woman’s testimony of what happened to her because, unfortunately, her word alone was not enough. The reality was we needed evidence to bolster a woman’s credibility that she was telling the truth about the rape. Quite honestly, so much of making a criminal case depended on the emergency room personnel who documented the victim’s condition when she came in—the bruises, the broken bones. All of this was in addition to the rape kit collection, and together, it lent credibility to the woman’s story. And in cases when a victim was afraid to tell anyone about the abuse, effective and compassionate care in the emergency room helped to encourage the victim to report the crime. Forensic evidence also made it more difficult for the police to deny that the abuse occurred.

ST: I recently read that of the 4,100 untested rape kits in Illinois police storage facilities, the oldest one was from 1978. Would you talk about the difference between what a woman reporting in 1978 and having a rape kit collected would experience and what a woman today experiences?

PP: In 1978, a victim would be fortunate if she got herself to an emergency room. It wasn’t as widely known that a woman could get help, so it was even more rare then for a woman to come forward to report the crime or get medical help. The process of the rape kit exam was, and continues to be, a pretty arduous experience, although that has certainly improved through sexual assault nurse examiners who are trained to do the exam as efficiently and compassionately as possible. Thirty years ago, many women went to the ER to get care because of a fear of pregnancy and many of them didn’t even necessarily want to report rape to police. The cultural bias against rape victims told a victim that she was probably not going to get the support she needed and that the assailant would never be apprehended. There was very little incentive to report rape. A woman went to ERs for care, not for evidence collection, so the woman getting a rape kit collected in 1978 was especially brave.

Also, back in 1978, we didn’t have as much information about the prevalence of rape. There was no data. It wasn’t until Illinois required emergency rooms to report to law enforcement that a victim had presented to the hospital for a rape (leaving out the victim’s name or address). And then we required law enforcement to publicly report the number of rapes reported to them. In areas where law enforcement developed a good relationship with emergency rooms, police would start to come to the emergency room to gather information from the victim and about the assailant. It gave police the opportunity to witness firsthand the severity of the assault.  Some police continued to use the ER visit as a time to determine if they believed the victim. It was so important as this practice developed to make certain that victim advocates were present to serve as a buffer of protection for the victim and work with law enforcement and emergency room personnel on her behalf.

Back in 1978, the definition of rape was very narrow. The victim had to be 14 or older, could not be the assailant’s spouse and the sex had to be sexual penetration by force. This narrow definition of rape in the law told the victim that if she did not meet the law’s definition of rape, then she was not a rape victim.

As we started to get some data on the prevalence of rape and how many different types of rape that were beyond the law’s definition of rape, we started to focus on how to get the law to better address the broad spectrum of rape.

ST: How do you think it helped to have an improved emergency room response?

PP: It helped get victims the care they needed to put their life back together again. It is my belief that victims need an immediate sense of recovery in order to reestablish their lives. I think that when we get an institution to respond well to the crime of rape, it’s useful in responding to the victim, but it also helps to address the impact of the crime on the community and helps preserve the physical and emotional integrity of the victim. And we cannot underestimate the role the advocate plays at the emergency room as she brings compassion and care to the victim during what are probably some of the worst moments of her life.

ST: And how has this improved training empowered victims?

PP: Hospitals and law enforcement now know that rape victims get to determine their care and the direction that care takes and that victims are free to determine how much care they want. This lets victims know that they are taking control of their lives and the process following rape; they are then better prepared to be a witness and better prepared to be a critical part of the criminal case. When professional care improves, victims want to be more engaged in the system.

ST: There are so many aspects to an improved criminal justice response. Let’s talk for a moment specifically about DNA and how that is useful in moving more cases forward.

PP: We think of DNA as being most useful when the assailant is a stranger, at least in terms of solving that individual case. And that is probably true. But I think that if you are not testing all rape kits–even in non-stranger cases–and not gathering the evidence that those kits provide, then you are dismissing what can be the most critical factor in the jury’s opinion. The more physical evidence and scientific evidence you provide them, the more useful it is. And it is incredibly helpful in interrupting the rape from occurring again, especially since serial rapists are often non-stranger rapists as well as stranger rapists. So I think it’s essential that we make sure that we are using all the tools we have to hold offenders accountable and DNA is a huge part in doing so.

I believe Illinois is making huge strides in terms of rape kit testing—and a lot of those strides happened because of the courage of victims to come forward and say, “I don’t think my rape kit was tested.” Everyone has to follow the law and we have a new law that says we need to collect rape kit evidence and that the evidence will be tested. You cannot have untested or unaccounted rape kits anymore in this state without now breaking the law. So, by mandating by law that every rape kit is tested, it sends the message that rape kit testing is serious—so serious there is a law mandating it—and that we take rape seriously. It is that kind of adherence to the law that creates a cultural understanding that this is serious, violent behavior and we are taking it seriously and we will handle testing with the utmost responsibility.

When people see that discretionary decisions are being made case by case regarding rape kit testing, or when testing is based on an individual police officer’s subjective beliefs about the case, then people see that it’s arbitrary, that it isn’t law at all, it’s based on whoever is in charge of the particular case or incident. That is a message to rape victims that, “this is not going to go well for me if I report. It’s going to be arbitrary about whether I am believed or not and I don’t know if reporting is worth it.” Institutions have a responsibility to provide standardization, uniformity, fairness and consistency in their responsibilities and once that is undermined and certain people are given passes and excuses, faith in those institutions is diminished.

ST: Let’s go back to the rape kit backlog. Talk to me about the latest developments in Illinois.

PP: There was a report just released by the Illinois State Police that found 4,100 untested kits inventoried in 379 different law enforcement agencies. Now that we have inventoried these kits, we know what we are dealing with in terms of our rape kit backlog. The best that is going to come out of this is that we will all collaborate and come to a common understanding that the implementation of law leads to successful investigations, increased safety of communities and hopefully justice for the victim.  We will start to see the value of stretching ourselves to create laws and implement laws that bring about justice and hopefully the prevention of rape.

I would like to think that the effort to end the rape kit backlog will result in a victim knowing that she or he will be believed and there is a system in place that will do its very best to bring justice to her or him. If, as a culture, we can ensure our citizens that if you reach out for help, you will be believed that you need help, and if we say to an assailant that they will be held accountable for violating someone’s sense of sexual safety, we will be more trusting of one another and our institutions.  Maybe then, we can live in community.

ST: What will it take to dramatically reduce—it not end altogether—sexual violence in this country?

PP: We certainly need increased funding, increased resources and laws requiring accountability, but that alone does not change a culture. It may keep us fortified with the resources that we need to be safe, but ending sexual violence is really dependent on human beings regarding one another as equals. Someone I regard as my equal I do not harm. If we had the practice of equality, we would see the end of rape. If we can move toward equality, we will start to see a decrease in rape.  We will see an increase in believing the victim and arresting the assailant and pursuing justice.  That practice brings dignity and rights back to women.

ST: What sticks with you the most about this work?

PP: I think a lot about the courage it takes to report rape. I think everyday about the victims who live with rape as a reference point in their lives. That is why I hold such deep respect and love for any woman under any circumstances who comes forward to report she was raped. Victims will live with the memory of rape, those who tell someone and are believed also build the positive memory of coming forward to seek support. We all must understand the impact of rape on an individual’s life and the significance that first responders have on a victim’s recovery.

Something I think about is how wonderful it would be to run after sundown, alone, during what would–I imagine—be a very meditative practice. But I don’t do it. And there is only one reason I don’t run after dark and that is the fear of rape. I see men after dark, running, in that same beautiful park and I would imagine it would feel serene and uplifting, but I don’t feel safe doing that. I want to live in a world where it is just as safe for a woman as a man to run after dark.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to know that whomever you meet, they would take care of you? That we would protect one another? Safety and freedom are integral, and dependent on one another.

]]> http://endthebacklog.org/blog/?feed=rss2&p=500 2 http://endthebacklog.org/blog/?p=423 http://endthebacklog.org/blog/?p=423#comments Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:42:55 +0000 Maile http://endthebacklog.org/blog/?p=423 Dear Hearts,

Joyful Heart was proud to sponsor the Lydia Martinez Celebration of Excellence, hosted by the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault (NYCAASA) on Monday.

Photography by: David Mattingly. From Left to Right: NYCAASA Executive Director Harriet Lessel with the Recipients of the 2011 Lydia Martinez Collaboration Awards Glenda Guzman, Eric Rosenbaum, Deesha Narichania, Maegan Corcoran and Richard Ortiz.

The Lydia Martinez Multi-Disciplinary Collaboration Awards were presented to five recipients in honor of the late First Grade Detective C. Lydia Martinez, a remarkable Special Victims Detective in New York City. I had the privilege of meeting Lydia and the strength, compassion and light that emanated from her were incredible. On Monday, her colleagues and friends, many of whom filled the room in which we were sitting, spoke about the indelible effect she had on their lives, the lives of the survivors she served and on the city’s collective response to sexual assault by law enforcement, prosecutors, advocates and medical personnel.

We were there on Monday to remember her legacy and celebrate work of those who follow in her footsteps: volunteer advocate Maegan Corcoran, Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner and Coordinator Glenda Guzman, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center Violence Intervention and Treatment Program Coordinator Deesha Narichania, NYPD Special Victims Detective Richard Ortiz and Queens Assistant District Attorney Eric Rosenbaum. Each of the five honorees works in a different kind of response team, but all of them demonstrate that same unique kind of dedication and compassion that it takes to do this work well on a daily basis with the survivors they serve.

It wasn’t surprising, given the name of the award, that one of the central themes of the day was collaboration. Harriet Lessel, the Executive Director of the NYCAASA said it beautifully in her opening remarks, “Sexual violence can be prevented, but it will take a community to do it.”

I was deeply moved by the spirit of collaboration and togetherness that I felt in the room. There was a real awareness that to respond to sexual violence in the best way, we can’t only do what we know how. We must be creative and thoughtful, and we must work in partnership with our response community and the survivors whose lives we hope to better to go beyond. It was that spirit we were celebrating in the five recipients of the Lydia Martinez Collaboration Awards.

Photography by: David Mattingly

Those of us in attendance had the honor of hearing New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly speak about some incredible reforms his department is making in response to extensive collaboration with advocates and responders. Under the leadership of Chief Mike Osgood, about 25 advocacy groups have been meeting regularly with the Department. Recently, they presented the NYPD with recommendations for improving law enforcement’s response to sexual assault victims.

“My message today is a simple one,” Commissioner Kelly began in his keynote speech. “The NYPD is listening to your concerns and we are taking action.”

New York City has long been a leader in response to violence against women in our country and the City continues to demonstrate this leadership today. As a result of these collaborative efforts, Commissioner Kelly has ensured that every sex crime will be investigated by a detective in the Special Victims Unit and every officer dispatched to a hospital to respond to a sexual assault victim will be a member of the SVU. Uniformed patrol officers will be receiving additional training in sensitivity around being the first responders to sexual assault victims. And the Department is increasing staff in the Special Victims Unit by 50%, an outstanding commitment in a difficult economic climate.

“It is going to be a challenge, but we are committed to doing it,” Commissioner Kelly said.

Photography by: David Mattingly. Myself and Sarah Tofte pose with Commissioner Ray Kelly.

Sarah Tofte, Joyful Heart’s Director of Advocacy & Policy, followed Commissioner Kelly’s keynote with a moving and inspiring speech of her own, commending the NYPD on these reforms and highlighting the service the honorees are doing every day to respond to survivors compassionately and courageously.

“We are so lucky to live in a city that takes sexual violence seriously, holds offenders accountable and keeps survivors safe,” she said.

Joyful Heart is a strong advocate of ending the backlog of untested rape kits–the DNA evidence collected from a rape victim’s body–and we consistently cite the NYPD as an example of all the good that can come out of testing them. In 2003, New York City ended its backlog of untested kits and today, they commit to test every kit booked into evidence.

“Your successful efforts send a message that rape kit testing matters, that a victim’s case is important, that what she went through to report the crime and go through the exam was not in vain, and that the perpetrator will not get away with their crime,” Sarah said, speaking to Commissioner Kelly.

Though Mariska couldn’t be there, she sent her love and gratitude to the award recipients and the attendees in a letter included with the program. In it, she said:

You encounter darkness, and you respond to that darkness with your light. You serve people when they are at their most vulnerable, and it is in these situations–and in the entire spectrum of what you encounter on a given day–that your dedication, expertise, compassion and humanity are so remarkable. Through your work, your strengthen the possibility of healing for survivors because you hear them, respond to them and commit yourselves to doing something about the violence and injustice that they have experienced. That is why I am so moved by your work: because it has the power to heal.

I am reminded of the expression “it takes a village.” In our case, it takes a city. It takes a county, a world. We can’t possibly create a world free of violence and injustice alone.

In moments like these that we take time to recognize the strength and vision of those working collaboratively toward this world–Eric, Richard, Deesha, Glenda and Maegan–I think of our own vision statement: “to ignite and foster an open dialogue about how to collaboratively end the cycle of violence and abuse,” and I am proud and honored to be a part of this effort.

View NYCAASA’s video of the award recipients below.

Charles Courtney, Jr., was arrested in Franklin County, Indiana in September 1996, for the knifepoint rape of his wife, Mary Jane, when she told him she wanted a divorce the night he returned from a trip on his job as a long-distance truck driver. Like defendants in many domestic violence cases, Courtney was offered a plea to a lesser charge of sexual battery. As such, his two-year sentence was far lighter than it would have been had he raped a stranger–a sad truth about many rapists whose victims are partners or acquaintances. That conviction earned the government the right to put Courtney’s genetic profile in the FBI’s convicted-offender databank. He was released from prison on January 4, 1998.

Three months later, a 21-year-old woman named Amberly Lakes was kidnapped in a parking lot outside a grocery store in Fairfield, Ohio, and taken to a remote location where her unknown assailant raped her repeatedly at knifepoint. In 2001, Lakes’ case was solved when the evidence preserved during her medical exam after the attack yielded DNA that matched Charles Courtney’s profile. Even though her evidence kit had languished on a storage shelf for more than two years, when Ohio authorities finally moved to eliminate their backlog, the result was a conviction in the case and a thirty-year jail sentence.

Even more shocking was the news that Helena Lazaro received last fall. In August of 1996, stopped at a car wash in Pico Rivera, California, in the VW Rabbit she’d been given by her parents as her 17th birthday present, she was abducted at knifepoint and sexually assaulted multiple times before her attacker abandoned her. Like Amberly, she consented to the collection of evidence during her lengthy hospital exam. Though she had called the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office many times in the fourteen years that elapsed, it wasn’t until 2010 that she learned her kit was among those tested in a backlog sweep in 2003, at which time it also matched to Charles Courtney – although Helena was never told of that result until she pressed for information six months ago. Here was a criminal viewed only as a danger to his wife, who was in fact a serial stranger rapist, with who knew how many other unsolved cases possibly linked to him from evidence shelved in warehouses along his cross-country truck route.

The backlog of untested rape evidence collection kits in cities across America–estimated by the Department of Justice to number more than 200,000–continues to be a national disgrace. Debates continue about how to resolve the problem and whether to devote resources to testing kits stored in police property warehouses for years, but one critic of the movement echoed some of the most common misunderstandings about this issue earlier this month. In a completely irresponsible piece posted on Women’s eNews on February 9, Wendy Murphy dismissed the importance of the backlog by ignoring the facts about sexual assault.

For 26 years, from 1972 until 2002, I was the prosecutor in charge of the country’s pioneering Sex Crimes Unit in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. I was among the first lawyers to be introduced to the revolutionary science of DNA in 1986, three years before it was accepted as a valid technique by our courts. When the first databank became operational in 1994, my colleagues and I watched with amazement as computers began to solve cases, matching offenders’ genetic profiles to evidence gathered during a sexual assault investigation–cases in which the crime scene is the victim’s body. By the late 1990s, the law enforcement community knew that rape kits, which were previously only tested if specific suspects were identified by the police for comparison, were mounting by the thousands. In 1999, under the leadership of New York City’s mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, and Police Commissioner Howard Safir, the radical decision was made to outsource close to 17,000 kits to private labs, at enormous government expense, in order to attempt to obtain results that might offer justice to victims of these heinous crimes, and make offenders – often recidivists – accountable.

The two brilliant prosecutors who run the Cold Case Forensic Science Unit established last year by Manhattan’s new district attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr., know more about DNA and its forensic applications than any lawyers in the country. Martha Bashford and Melissa Mourges were appointed to oversee the backlog project in 2000, as the outsourced cases made their way to three labs and results began to come back in. Their success has been remarkable. If you set aside cases that were eliminated for reasons like being beyond the statutes of limitations (formerly ten years in New York State, though outrage over the backlog results eliminated it completely in 2006), Bashford and Mourges say they’ve indicted 38 percent of the viable cases returned, and in the convictions obtained have seen sentences total in hundreds of years.

Rape kits stored by the Cleveland Police Department. The Department of Justice estimates the number of untested rape kits nationwide to be more than 200,000. (Photo: Lonnie Timmons III, The Plain Dealer / Landov)

So what is wrong with the opinions of the backlog naysayers? They start from the very moment after victimization, when most women sensibly call 911. Whether the assailant was known to the victim or not, it is essential for her physical well-being to submit to a medical exam. Yes, the wait in a hospital ER may be long and arduous, because for the overwhelming number of rape victims, the life-threatening danger has passed with the rapist’s departure, and they are triaged behind more critical medical injuries. She needs to be examined from head to toe, as well as internally, because sometimes the abrasions and lacerations–even when minor–that are occasioned by forcible sex are in places she is not able to observe. She has been exposed to the potential of venereal disease, HIV infection and the possibility of pregnancy, all of which make medical attention imperative.

Murphy goes on to call this essential evidence collection process one of “needless tests,” falsely describing medical professionals as “agents of the government” when they do this work. No victim is subjected to evidence collection without her informed consent. The doctors and nurses who do these exams all over the country–many of them trained specifically as forensic examiners–explain the purpose of the additional tests. Most intelligent witnesses understand their value and wisely agree to the procedures.

For me, having started work in this field long before DNA was validated, it is stunning to see how science can take the onus off the witness and ultimately ease her progression through the criminal justice system.  That result cannot happen, though, without a proper forensic medical exam. These are totally false arguments advanced by Murphy, which suggest that the state has the awesome power to force a victim to put her feet in the stirrups and submit to medical probing–arguments that are as foolish and fear-mongering as they are false.

Are more women raped by acquaintances than by strangers? There is no question that in greater than 75 percent of reported rapes the victim knows her attacker.  This may be because they have had a prior sexual relationship, or have dated briefly, or have a professional connection (cases include dentists, doctors, teachers and just about every career connection imaginable), or hooked up at a party the night the crime occurred. And at many of these trials, the issue is not the identity of the man accused anyway, but whether or not the sex act was consensual. Again the naysayers are dead wrong, because even in these cases DNA can be a powerful prosecutorial tool. Frequently, the defendant’s claim will be that the witness is “crying rape” and that his ex-girlfriend just had him arrested because he broke up with her. The finding of his DNA on her vaginal swabs makes him a liar from the outset, and forces him to change his story in front of a jury, now admitting there was sex but claiming it was consensual. This midstream change in story alone can convince a jury to convict, and if not, DNA found in the victim’s anus, along with rectal tears, may seal the deal.

The bigger myth spread by the anti-backloggers is that men who rape women they know couldn’t possibly be serial rapists, so why waste time and money testing kits in cases of marital and date rape? Charles Courtney, the man who was convicted of raping his wife and then abducting two young women at knifepoint, thousands of miles apart, is the poster boy for disproving that argument.

A man who forces the most intimate sexual acts on a loved one–like Courtney–rarely has a problem compelling a stranger to submit to him. Many of the date rapists we prosecuted had multiple victims and got away with this serial conduct for a very long time, often because women were reluctant to report the crimes. And many of the acquaintance offenders who use drugs to render their victims unconscious repeat their acts over and over again–whether college students or health care professionals or the guys who hang out in clubs, waiting for vulnerable prey. Outsource your backlog and I promise you there will be crossover cases between the categories of offenders–stranger and acquaintance assailants.

There are other examples. Terrence Reid was awaiting sentence by a Manhattan judge on his first conviction not long ago. His lawyer’s appeal to the court for the minimum sentence was based on the notion that this case was an aberration in the defendant’s otherwise exemplary life. Several days before the sentence, Bashford and Mourges received news from the backlog testing lab, showing that Reid’s profile hit to five other rapes in that county and two more in Queens–seven brutal crimes to which only a computer had connected him, and all occurring before the statute of limitations ran out. Although he could not have been punished for those, the judge was able to take his aggravated criminal history into account and sentence him to the maximum, relying on the very background he had asked the court to consider.

And yet another: A middle-aged woman who worked in a pattern-cutting business was the last to leave her office one evening. While waiting for the elevator she was accosted by an armed assailant who raped her on the floor before tying her to a chair, cutting her leg as he ripped phone cords with his knife. She was never able to identify her attacker, but Bashford and Mourges got the cold hit from the backlog project lab exactly three weeks before this career criminal was to be released from jail on an unrelated case. Sadly, when they located the home of the woman who had been victimized years earlier, they learned from her family that she had died of heart disease. Undeterred, the case pressed forward and was prosecuted by this great team. When they showed the prisoner her photograph, he claimed to have never seen her before. But even with no victim, there was proof of force (because she had been found tied up) and DNA identification courtesy of a backlogged evidence kit. And by the way, at the trial? Just like in other cases, the rapist’s defense changed from “I’ve never seen her before” to “the sex was consensual” when the perpetrator found out there was DNA evidence. The jury rejected his nonsense, just as they do in more and more rape cases in which consent is initially claimed. The naysayers wouldn’t bother to test a kit in which the victim wasn’t alive, which would be another grave mistake.

Finally, there is one critical word missing from the arguments of those who don’t see the need to clear the hundreds of thousands of backlogged kits: exoneration. Close to 4,000 of the city’s 17,000 evidence kits were Manhattan cases. In one result, the profile developed was a case that had already gone to trial more than a decade earlier. At the time of the crime, the victim had been a fifteen year old girl. The man she saw on the street and identified, a month after the attack, was convicted by a jury. The jurors obviously believed the smart witness, and may have been influenced by the fact that the defendant had a criminal record. He was twelve years into his sentence when this evidence was tested, something many jurisdictions would not have bothered to do because this was a closed case. The victim, now working in law enforcement, took one look at the real perp’s photograph thirteen years later and burst into tears. Bashford and Mourges got the news of this potential exoneration on a Wednesday afternoon, had the evidence retested immediately, and walked the innocent man out of prison, still in his orange jumpsuit, on Monday morning. The lesson? Every sizable backlog will yield at least one exoneration. That’s reason enough to test them all.

This backlog issue must be resolved. The facts cry out for the need to fund outsourcing not only to solve crimes, but also to save lives. Opponents of testing simply haven’t bothered to learn the facts nor to study the results of successful backlog projects, and the people most hurt by such misguided voices are the hundreds of thousands of rape victims themselves. There are few among them who haven’t said, when detectives knock on their doors with astounding news of the DNA match, that they thought they were the only person alive who remembered their case.

Linda Fairstein is a bestselling crime novelist and the former chief prosecutor of the New York County District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit. Her new novel, SILENT MERCY, is being released on March 8th by Dutton. Fairstein also serves as Vice Chair of the Joyful Heart Foundation’s Board of Directors.

To learn more about the rape kit backlog, please visit www.endthebacklog.org.

Ella and others at the Kentucky Youth Assembly, where they presented mock legislation to eliminate the state's rape kit backlog.

In 2010, the Joyful Heart Foundation‘s second issue of Reunion featured a story of a young girl whose big voice is matched only by her bigger heart. Ella Burnside was given an assignment from her English teacher: write about something in the world you want to change, and then do it. Ella wrote about ending sexual violence and domestic abuse, and then went about raising over $10,000 for Joyful Heart. She was in tenth grade.

This school year, Ella attended a youth government conference in her home state of Kentucky. There, she and several of her classmates presented a bill to the mock legislature calling for the elimination of Kentucky’s backlog of untested rape kits and proposing a timeline to get the kits tested. Several news sources, including CBS and WLKY, have reported on the state crime lab’s backlog of hundreds of kits.

As Ella reported to us, her bill sailed through the mock House and Senate, with approximately 95% of her peers voting for it. “I am confident that they truly understood the importance of eliminating KY’s backlog and that many of them were immensely disturbed by the situation,” Ella told us. “While this was not actually presented to our state government, it was really neat to see that once people hear and understand this problem, most of them are ready to take action to reverse the situation. Hopefully the legislators in my state will react in the same way when they become aware of our backlog.”

At the end of the conference, the bill was ultimately vetoed by the conference’s student governor due to budget constraints, an outcome not unfamiliar to those working to reform rape kit testing across the country. In 2009, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill, AB1017, which would have made his the first state in the nation to collect comprehensive data on the physical evidence collected from rape victims that is sitting in police storage facilities, citing resource constraints. You can read the Huffington Post article that Sarah Tofte, Joyful Heart’s Director of Advocacy & Strategic Partnerships, wrote on his decision here.

Ella’s thoughtful work — and the response of the fellow student leaders in Kentucky — is encouraging news. If you or someone you know is doing something to raise awareness of the rape kit backlog or to contribute to the movement to end sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, we want to know about it!  Send an email to blog@joyfulheartfoundation.org.