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.

When asked about the untested kits, Davenport Police Chief Frank Donchez explained, “There are rape kits there that nothing can be done with. If we don’t know the victim, the suspect or the location of the incident, how can we conduct an investigation?”

After undergoing a rape kit examination, which can take between four and six hours, some victims of sexual assault decide not to report the assault to the police. In these instances, the rape kit is sometimes referred to as an “anonymous” or “Jane Doe” kit. To protect the victim’s privacy, the rape kit does not reveal any identifying information. Victims are given a code number they can use to identify themselves if they later choose to report the assault.

How long a police department must store an anonymous kit varies by state and jurisdiction. Under Iowa law, police must store the kit for a minimum of ten years.

Nationally, rape is one of the most underreported crimes, with an estimated 65 percent of cases unreported. There are many reasons why a survivor of sexual assault may decide not to report the assault, including embarrassment or shame, fear of being disbelieved or blamed, the re-traumatization that participating in the criminal justice system can bring, and fear of reprisal by the perpetrator. The closer the relationship between the survivor and the offender, the less likely the survivor is to report the assault.

Whether a survivor eventually decides to report the assault or not, members of law enforcement, prosecutors and service providers must support and empower the survivor to make that decision without any pressure. They must then respect the decision the survivor makes.

In other backlog news, a recent editorial in The New York Times called on the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the SAFER Act, which has since been added to the Violence Against Women Act currently being voted on in the Senate. The editorial also revealed new backlog numbers out of Fort Worth, Texas. When Fort Worth police submitted 960 kits for testing, the results led to the identification of 102 suspects, 47 arrests and 36 felony convictions. While clearing a backlog is a critical first step in bringing justice to survivors, jurisdictions must fully commit to following up on the investigative leads that testing can generate.

In 2011, the Texas state legislature passed a bill requiring law enforcement agencies to count the untested kits in their evidence rooms and report their numbers to DPS. Despite an October 2011 deadline, few agencies complied with the reporting requirement.

To date, approximately 130 of more than 2,600 police agencies have submitted their backlog numbers, including many of the biggest agencies. Among the reporting agencies, there are 15,900 untested rape kits. Based on that number, DPS estimates there to be roughly 20,000 untested kits statewide.

To clear a backlog of that size, DPS believes it will cost between $7 million and $11 million. When the state legislature meets for its 2013 session, it will discuss how to pay for testing. State officials are hopeful that the U.S. Congress will pass the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Registry (SAFER) Act, which would create a national registry for rape kit evidence and amend current law to require a greater percentage of Debbie Smith Act grant funds be spent directly on analyzing untested DNA evidence. The U.S. Senate passed the SAFER Act on New Year’s Eve, but it failed to pass the House and will be re-introduced in the new session.

Some Texas law enforcement agencies are already seeing results from their efforts to clear the backlog. In Houston, where fees collected from strip-club patrons help to fund the processing of untested rape kits, testing led to the arrest of a man for a rape that occurred ten years ago.

Having this legislation passed in Texas represents an enormous milestone in the movement to end the backlog of untested rape kits. A groundswell for reform is happening. We hope that in the coming year, state legislators from around the country will be inspired by the work of their counterparts in Texas and Illinois. Texas has shown that it is possible to enact rape kit reform, giving survivors of sexual assault and their loved ones the opportunity for healing and justice that rape kit testing brings.

You can read more of our coverage of this process here on the Backlog Blog and our op-ed from last month urging the passage of the bill in the Houston Chronicle. We will keep you updated as there is more news about this historic event.

The bill would require law enforcement to inventory and report the number of untested rape kits in their storage facilities by October 2011 and to send all backlogged kits for testing by 2012. In addition, every new rape kit would be sent to a crime lab within 30 days of being booked into police evidence.

Testing kits helps bring perpetrators to justice and sends rapists the message that they will be held accountable for their crimes. And significantly, testing sends rape victims the clear, compassionate and vital message that their cases and their lives matter.

After a victim goes through an exam and agrees to have the kit turned over to the police, the logical assumption is that the evidence collected will be sent to a crime lab for testing. Why else would so much effort, time and extreme discomfort go into collecting the evidence?

But all too often, rape kits never reach the labs. As statutes of limitation run out and rapists go free to rape again, kits pile up in storage facilities in cities across the country. The news from Houston, Dallas and San Antonio reveals that Texas is no exception. Texas doesn’t currently require authorities to track untested rape kits, making the exact number throughout the state impossible to determine, but the sampling from several cities suggests that the backlog is big.

The Senate had already passed the legislation and this week, the House has unanimously passed it as well. It is now awaiting Governor Rick Perry’s signature.

If signed into law, Texas would become only the second state in the nation to enact such comprehensive rape kit reform. Illinois became the first in July of last year and since the law has come into effect, it has already yielded the first government-mandated report on and plan for the rape kit backlog across an entire state.

From the op-ed:

In [Texas,] a state with a 23 percent arrest rate for reported rapes–which means assailants have a 3 out of 4 chance of walking away without consequence–rape kit reform would not only send thousands of untested kits to the labs they were intended to reach, but would also give thousands of rape victims the opportunity for healing, as well as the justice they sought when they first reported the crimes.
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The news about the rape kit backlog in Texas is alarming. But the problem can be fixed.

Pass this legislation, sign it into law and let Texas lead in rape kit reform.

Read the full op-ed on the Houston Chronicle, as well as recent coverage of the bill on KENS 5, The Texas Observer and CBS News.

From The Texas Tribune article:

In police departments across Texas, tens of thousands of rape kits have been sitting on the shelves of property storage rooms for years, the result of strained budgets, overworked crime labs and a law enforcement philosophy that rape kits are primarily useful as evidence if a stranger committed the assault.

Officials in Texas have been struggling to find short-term solutions to its backlog for years. In 2009, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported that the Dallas PD decided to suspend testing of cold-case rape kits to prioritize testing more recent cases. About a year ago, the Houston Chronicle reported that the City Council in Houston had approved $4.2 in contracts with four private labs to help the struggling HDP crime lab. In November 2009, the San Antonio Police pledged to test of all its kits, but only in stranger cases. And even still, the department is having a difficult time keeping up: ABC’s local station KSAT reported that of the 704 rape kits taken from victims in that year, 227 never even made it to the crime lab.

Working through these backlogs is no easy feat, but as New York City has proven, it can be done. Like Houston, New York City contracted the testing of its 16,000 kit backlog to private crime labs back in 2000; the work was completed in 2003. However, New York didn’t stop there. Funding for extra staff and resources at the crime lab ensure that that every kit is tested in a timely manner, regardless of whether the evidence is from a stranger, acquaintance or partner.

Similarly,  San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that calls for DNA testing of all rape kits within two weeks of collection, and notifying victims of the status of their cases and kits.

The rape kit backlog can be fixed. Policymakers in Texas, like State Senator Wendy Davis, know this. According to The Texas Tribune article:

State Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, is preparing a bill that would require police departments to test all rape kits in their possession and every one they get in the future. “I think we owe it to every person who has been raped,” Davis said.

Testing every kit not only opens up the possibility of advancing more rape cases through the system–New York’s arrest rate for sexual assaults skyrocketed from 40% to 70% when it began testing all kits–but it sends a message to victims that their cases matter. We need to give victims the confidence that the system is working for them.

From the article:

“Rape victims would not endure the humiliation of a post-assault exam if they understood that the evidence might not be tested and that they did not have the right to decide whether the kit was tested,” said Victoria Camp, deputy director of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault. “All of the kits need to be tested,” Camp said. “That costs money, and I know it takes time, but I think we should prioritize the kits and start working on that backlog until they are all tested.”

We agree. Here’s hoping for continued positive developments in Texas for survivors.

Be sure to check out the full article on The Texas Tribune website here, or The New York Times here.