Here are a few highlights of their progress:

Robbins, Illinois

CBS Chicago reports that police in Robbins, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, recently discovered 51 rape kits that had never been sent for testing. Some of the kits dated as far back as 1986. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office is now working to process this backlog because Robbins lacks the resources to do so.

According to the Robbins Police Department, they did not test the kits because the victims either recanted or declined to press charges. This is difficult to verify, however, because a flood in the basement of the Department destroyed the statements that would normally accompany the kits. That being the case, the Sheriff’s Office will process all 51 kits.

In a press conference, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said a rape kit examination “is incredibly difficult and traumatic for a woman to go through, and it’s rare someone would go through with it and not want to pursue a criminal case.” He added, “The victims should know they will have their cases heard, and they will be treated like they should have been treated. My goal is to bring justice to these folks.” Sheriff Dart’s office has been assisting Robbins with patrols and investigations in recent weeks, which led to the discovery of the untested kits.

As we reported previously, state officials made a similar discovery in Harvey, a neighboring suburb, in 2007. In a raid on the Harvey Police Department, officials uncovered 200 untested rape kits. In 2010, Illinois became the first state to pass legislation requiring the tracking and testing of all rape kits.

Houston, Texas

Houston’s Mayor Annise Parker has announced the city’s plan to eliminate its backlog of more than 6,600 untested rape kits within 14 months. The Houston Chronicle reports that it will cost Houston $4.4 million to outsource the kits to two private labs for testing. Funding will come from $2.2 million in federal grants and $2.2 million in the city’s current budget.

While it typically costs approximately $1,200 to outsource just one rape kit, the labs have offered a price of $400 per kit given the large volume of kits they will receive. With the backlogged kits, the city will also send 1,450 kits from active rape cases, 1,020 DNA samples from other crimes and an estimated 1,000 rape kits that will be collected over the next year, for a total of 10,130.

Texas was the second state to require that law enforcement agencies test every rape kit booked into evidence. Houston, which received a National Institute of Justice action-research grant, along with Detroit, to study the causes of its backlog, has its own policy of testing every kit. This policy came about because of the ability of rape kit evidence to link perpetrators to other crimes and to honor survivors’ courageous decision to undergo a rape kit exam and report the crime.

Ohio

Law enforcement agencies from across the state of Ohio recently sent more than 2,300 untested rape kits to a state crime lab for analysis. Almost half of the untested kits came from the Cleveland Police. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, when all of the recently submitted kits are tested, law enforcement could have an estimated 850 cases resulting from DNA database matches.

While Ohio has not passed legislation requiring the testing of all rape kits, in late 2011, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine adopted a policy encouraging all law enforcement agencies to clear their backlogs. His office hired additional crime lab staff to handle the influx of evidence.

Cleveland alone discovered that it had more than 3,700 untested kits dating as far back as 1991. To date, the city has submitted 1,073 kits to the lab. The Toledo Police Department has sent 215 kits, and Akron has sent more than 300 kits, dating as far back as 1994. The crime lab is testing up to 100 kits per month, starting with the oldest first.

Of the kits tested so far, 103 contained useable DNA evidence, and 65 matched to DNA profiles in CODIS. Thirty-six of the cases with matches originated in Cleveland, and those matches have confirmed the identity of 11 suspects, identified potential suspects in 21 cases and identified a possible serial rapist.

Police officials in Cleveland, as well as Toledo and Akron, have expressed their commitment to following up on and investigating the leads that result from clearing their backlogs. Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath plans to add two more detectives to the Sex Crimes & Child Abuse unit and seek assistance from the FBI, if necessary. He said, “I wouldn’t send these kits if I wasn’t going to follow up on them.” Deputy Chief Ed Tomba added that their primary concern is locating survivors and responding to the varied reactions they will have upon learning of new leads in their cases.

The victim submitted to a sexual assault evidence collection–or rape kit–exam in August of 1997 after reporting numerous instances of being sexual assaulted by her step-father, Robert Buchanan. Buchanan was questioned but never charged by the Harvey Police Department and went on to serve as a corrections officer in a local jail for over a decade.

This kit was one of 200 untested rape kits that the Cook County State’s Attorney office, the sheriff’s office and the Illinois State Police recovered in a 2007 raid, according to various news agencies, including NBC, CBS, ABC, the Chicago Tribune and The Huffington Post.

Under the 2010 Illinois Sexual Assault Evidence Submission Act, the first of two state-wide laws in the country that mandate law enforcement to track and test all rape kits, the Illinois State Police (ISP) was required to collect data on all untested rape kits throughout the state of Illinois. In March, 2011, the ISP released a report documenting 4,126 sexual assault cases in connection to untested rape kits in the state of Illinois.

It is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits across the country.

As for the 200 untested rape kits recovered from the Harvey Police Department, the Illinois State’s Attorney’s office began an investigation into these cases in 2007. Since it has begun, charges have been brought against 14 defendants in 20 separate cases, State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said.

“The victims of these sexual assaults were denied justice when their attacks occurred but we have not forgotten about them,” she said.

We applaud those branches of the Illinois government that have taken action to bring healing and justice that survivors of sexual assault deserve. It should have been delivered years ago.

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=68 http://endthebacklog.org/blog/?p=68#comments Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:55:58 +0000 Sarah http://endthebacklog.org/blog/?p=68

Human Rights Watch Report: “I Used to Think the Law Would Protect Me” Illinois’s Failure to Test Rape Kits

A young woman, Stephanie (not her real name), came to see me in my New York office. She had been raped in Chicago two years earlier, and had heard from an advocate there for rape victims that I was writing a report on untested DNA evidence from rape cases in Illinois. I took her for coffee so we could get to know each other before I interviewed her, and we talked about her teaching job, her move to New York City and my new son.

Then, in the middle of our introduction to one another, Stephanie said: “After this experience, I don’t feel safe anymore. I am a tough girl, but it made me feel like if something happened, the law isn’t there for me. It doesn’t really work.”

Stephanie was talking about the fact that the DNA evidence, known as a “rape kit”—collected over a period of hours in the emergency room with medical personnel examining her entire body—had never been tested. Her rapist had never been interviewed by the police or arrested. And now, two years later, she was trying to come to terms with the way her case was handled.

I spoke to Stephanie at the early stages of research that I did for Human Rights Watch into the rape kit backlog in Illinois. What I suspected, but had not yet confirmed, was that there were many survivors like her who had seen very little investigation happen with their rape case. What I found is that the vast majority of DNA evidence collected from rape victims in Illinois is never tested and that the arrest rate for rape is just 11 percent compared to 24 percent nationally.

Just as Stephanie’s story is more common in Illinois than she or I realized, I hear similar accounts from rape victims across the country. Investigations by non-profit organizations and national and local media outlets have uncovered rape kit backlogs in numerous cities, which demonstrates we have a national problem on our hands. In the past year alone, rape kit backlogs have been discovered in Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit, Nashville, Baltimore, San Diego, and Oakland.

The national arrest rate for rape is at 24 percent—the lowest rate for all violent crimes—a strong indication that justice is not working as well as it should for rape victims. One simple step to address the issue would be to send rape kits for testing.

National studies have shown that cases in which rape kit evidence was tested were more likely to proceed through the criminal justice system and lead to arrests. Once New York City adopted the Giuliani-era policy to test every booked rape kit, its arrest rate for rape rose from 40 percent to 70 percent. In Los Angeles, a recent decision to test every booked rape kit uncovered DNA evidence from suspects in other rape cases.

My research in Illinois, the first state-wide analysis of the rape kit backlog, appeared in a Human Rights Watch report, “‘I Used to Think the Law Would Protect Me’: Illinois’s Failure to Test Rape Kits.” With comprehensive testing data from 127 of 267 jurisdictions in Illinois, we found that only 1,474 of the 7,494 rape kits booked into evidence since 1995 could be confirmed as tested. That suggests 80 percent of rape kits may never have been examined.

Yet there is good news for Illinois. A new law, the 2010 Sexual Assault Evidence Submission Act, championed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, has the potential to remedy the state’s rape kit backlog. The law, enacted September 1, 2010, makes Illinois the first state to require law enforcement officials to send track rape kit data, and send every rape kit in police custody to the crime lab for DNA testing within 10 days. You can read more about the efforts in Illinois in this recent Huffington Post article by Lisa Madigan.

In my experience, rape kit backlogs seem to be found im many places one decides to investigate. Which means laws alone are not enough. We have to give law enforcement the support they need to do their jobs. State and federal governments have to allocate the resources, training, technical support and funding to make sure every kit is tested.

A few months ago, I spoke again with Stephanie. She recalled for me how she pursued her case in the months after the rape. The detective assigned to her case worked the night shift. So every night she would set her alarm for 3 a.m., wake up, and call the station, hoping to reach him and get the case moving. “How stupid of me,” she said, “to have expected anything to come of those calls.”

In the words of a police officer I spoke with in Illinois said, “We need to do everything we can to encourage rape victims to come forward. One way we do that here is to make sure that we do everything in our power to solve their case.”

We all agree–rape victims like Stephanie should never feel “stupid” for expecting perpetrators to be brought to justice and prevented from raping again. With Illinois’s new law, the state is turning the page on its rape kit backlog and giving survivors like Stephanie a better shot at justice.