Unfortunately, a grand jury returned the first indictment one day after the 20-year statute of limitations had expired, which means the prosecution will not move forward. In that case, a rape kit from 1993 matched to Charles Steele, whose DNA profile was entered into the state’s database as a result of his incarceration for another rape case in Hamilton County. Detectives submitted the 1993 kit in July 2011 and did not receive the results until 17 months later. After receiving the results on December 25 of last year, they delayed in handing the case over to prosecutors to present to a grand jury. Two days after Steele was indicted, his DNA matched to yet another attack on a Cleveland woman that occurred eight months after the first Cleveland rape. Charges are pending in the later case.

The second indictment involved charges of rape, kidnapping, assault and attempted murder in another 1993 case against defendant Anthony Moore. This second indictment came just one day before the statute of limitations expired.

As more DNA results return from the lab, police will be working against the clock to investigate cases and turn them over to prosecutors for indictment before the statute of limitations expires. A Plain Dealer analysis conducted in February estimated approximately one-third of the kits sent to the lab could result in a DNA hit, if testing trends continue. That would mean more than 1,100 hits once the 3,000-plus kits in storage have been tested. Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath has said he plans to add up to two more detectives to the Sex Crimes & Child Abuse unit and to enlist the help of the FBI, if necessary.

Attorney General DeWine announced the backlog initiative in December 2011 and hired four new forensic scientists to focus exclusively on testing backlogged kits. Of the initiative, he said:

“More DNA hits mean more cold cases become open investigations for our local law enforcement agencies. My office is dedicated to helping our local authorities resolve as many of these cases as possible. I encourage any department with sexual assault kits that have not been tested, no matter how old the case is, to submit them now. We want them. We want to help bring justice to the victims. We want to solve more cases.”

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.

An eleven-member commission that the Attorney General’s Office convened also recommended a new policy that law enforcement agencies submit any untested kits to a state lab regardless of whether a decision has been made to prosecute. Previously, there had been no policy on submitting rape kits. According to the policy, these developments will ensure the entry of offender DNA into police databases.

Attorney General DeWine expects the amount of kits sent to Ohio crime labs will increase from 50 percent to 90 percent. He said:

“We want to assure victims of sexual assault their cases will not be forgotten. We are determined to bring these rapists to justice.”

While the extent of Ohio’s rape kit backlog is unknown, the attorney general’s office reported it has received 2,000 backlogged cases just from Cuyahoga County so far, which includes Cleveland. Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) currently tests 1,000 rape kits per year and expects that number to rise to 1,500 in the first year after the hiring of the new forensic scientists and 3,000 kits the following year. BCI is prepared to commit “whatever resources are necessary” to process additional kits.

Attorney General DeWine has explained, “The new policy is fairly simple: if a crime was committed, the kit should be submitted. If a crime probably occurred, law enforcement should submit the kit for testing.”

Cathy Harper Lee, Executive Director of The Justice League of Ohio and member of the attorney general’s commission, adds:

“When we have a victim report to us, and we feel there is substantial evidence that a crime occurred and we’ve seen a kit that’s not being processed…there is tremendous concern that the victim is not getting justice, and the offender is staying in the community to commit more crimes.”

In addition to the new testing policy, the attorney general’s office announced that the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy (OPOTA) will enhance its current sexual assault training courses to emphasize law enforcement interaction with survivors, advocates and medical personnel. In partnership with the Attorney General’s Crime Victim Section, OPOTA will also produce an online course “to bring victim-focused training to every officer in Ohio” at anytime and free of charge.

The Plain Dealer reports that, “at least a third of reported sex offenses, including many involving children, have been classified by the police department as non-crimes with labels such as ‘miscellaneous’ or ‘departmental information.’”

The investigation began after police reported that a total of 26 sexual assaults were reported in the city over a three year period. Reporters questioned the statistics and eventually, the city produced 88 cases that had been reported in the years between 2008 and 2010. Many of the cases has been classified as unfounded, closed without changes or not labeled as rape or sexual offenses.

The Plain Dealer also found that the city under-reported the number of “forcible rapes” to the FBI as well. Though the FBI’s definition is currently more narrow than the state law’s definition of sexual assault, almost two dozen cases should have been counted. Only three were reported from 2008 to 2010.

Despite having an new policy on how evidence, including evidence from rape kits, is collected, stored and tested, the department doesn’t have a written policy on how sexual assault cases should be investigated. Another recent article in The Plain Dealer also describes how most departments in Cuyahoga County, where the cities of Cleveland and Cleveland Heights are located, do not have specific policies detailing how to handle sexual assaults.

“It is the responsibility of police to define and classify these crimes properly, and to report the numbers accurately,” Cleveland Rape Crisis Center President & CEO Megan O’Bryan said. “Victims will continue to be silenced if their reports are not taken seriously, investigated thoroughly, and correctly reflected in crime statistics,” O’Bryan said. “We regularly hear stories, in the media and within the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, of sex crime reports not being taken seriously, victims not wanting to ‘cooperate’ with police investigations, and investigations gone awry due to lack of understanding of sexual assault, guidelines and policies,” O’Bryan said. “A stand-alone sexual assault policy is a step on a really steep ladder to changing this climate for rape victims, but a step in the right direction.”

Read more of our coverage of Ohio’s response to sexual assault here on the Backlog Blog.

We wanted to draw your attention to this article by Laura Strickler, an Emmy award winning journalist who produced a watershed news story on the rape kit backlog in the United States in 2009. In her coverage of the outcome of the trial on CBS News, she summarizes the numerous missed opportunities for the Cleveland and Cleveland Heights Police Departments to apprehend Sowell, a registered sex offender and subject of numerous reports of sexual assault. In one of those cases, police and prosecutors deemed the victim to be a “not credible” witness. In another, though police collected a rape kit, the responding officer allegedly failed to tell the special victims detective about the evidence and the case went cold. And as the article reports, like many jurisdictions across the United States, the Cleveland Heights Police Department did not have a computerized system for tracking rape kits.

The lessons learned form this case are many, but they came at a devastatingly high cost. The Cleveland Heights PD has already said they will be testing all rape kits that have been booked into evidence and the department now tracks all rape kit evidence on a computer, according to the article. As well, Ohio Attorney General Mike Dewine has convened a task force consisting of law enforcement officials, prosecutors and advocates to discuss standardizing rape kit practices across the state and to determine best practices.

Click below to read the full article:

You can also read the interview reporter Laura Strickler gave to the Backlog Blog earlier this year here.

This recent case shines light on the rape kit backlog in Ohio and on the way law enforcement responds to sexual violence. From an article in The Plain Dealer:

Cleveland Heights police say they did not test sexual assault evidence that could have connected another woman’s rape to serial-killings suspect Anthony Sowell in 2009 because they didn’t know they had the evidence.
…
City officials said they discovered the rape kit among other stored evidence almost two years later when Cleveland police asked for it as a part of their investigation of Sowell [for other charges].

The Plain Dealer reported that the police department sent urine and blood samples to the lab along with the victim’s clothing, but did not submit the actual rape kit, which contained the DNA evidence from the perpetrator.

Only two states–Illinois and now Texas–and some cities–notably New York City and San Francisco–have implemented protocols that mandate that all rape kits are tested in a timely manner, so errors and negligence like this are not unique. The Plain Dealer points out in an editorial from last week:

[Cleveland Heights City Law Director John] Gibbon and current Cleveland Heights Police Chief Jeffrey Robertson…have said that a detective attempted to investigate the alleged rape, but that the victim was uncooperative. Gibbon said the detective called and left a card for her numerous times after the initial report, but she never contacted him.

Yet she did cooperate enough to provide the department with ample physical evidence that, if properly handled, should have led to an arrest — possibly saving lives.

That’s why sexual assault is a serious crime that merits serious attention and police time — time and attention that the Cleveland Heights Police Department, under former Chief Martin Lentz, did not accord to this case.

In the wake of this case, a task force commissioned by the Ohio Attorney General’s office has resumed its work to implement a statewide protocol on handling sexual assault cases and rape kits. In another article in The Plain Dealer, Joe Guillen reports that the police departments will be surveyed over the next month about situations in which they do–and do not–send sexual assault kits to labs for testing. The commission will use the results to to better understand inconsistencies throughout the state and to inform their recommendations for statewide standards for handling sexual assault evidence.

Ohio Attorney General Michael DeWine has called for a statewide protocol on how to handle rape kit testing. Photography by: Jack Kustro

Following a disclosure by Cuyahoga County prosecutors that an untested rape kit linked to a serial-killing suspect, Ohio’s Attorney General Mike DeWine has called for a statewide protocol based on  best practices of how rape case evidence should be handled and tested. He will be forming an 11-member Sexual Assault Kit Testing Commission to produce the  “Ohio Model Sexual Assault Kit Testing Guide.”

In 2009, the Cleveland Heights Police Department took custody of the rape kit, which contained DNA evidence left on a victim’s body following a sexual assault, but it was never sent out to a crime lab for testing. Last week, the county prosecutors office revealed that evidence contained in this rape kit linked to Anthony Sowell, who has been charged with multiple counts of aggravated murder, kidnapping, abusing a corpse and tampering with evidence in the deaths of the 11 women. He faces the death penalty if convicted.

Cleveland and Cincinnati are just a few of the large cities in the country wrangling with extensive backlogs of rape kits that have not been tested. According to the article in The Plain Dealer, the city of Cleveland didn’t know how many untested kits were mounting in evidence rooms until recently. In late 2009, the Cleveland Police Department began counting their rape kits  and as of last month, officials were still cataloging the evidence. They have identified a total of 6,184 rape kits collected from 1991 through 2010. More than half–almost 3,600 kits–have not been submitted for forensic testing, according to police spokesman Sgt. Sammy Morris.

An editorial accompanying the article discussed how a lack of uniformity across the state for how police departments handle rape kits leads to chaos and lack of accountability in the criminal justice system and lost justice for survivors:

…Procedures vary from department to department. There is no oversight, no accountability….

The sooner DeWine sets standards for testing and tracking rape kits, the sooner police departments can be held accountable for how they handle sexual assault investigations.

Survivors deserve nothing less.

We agree.

The commission will hold its first meeting June 14 in Columbus.

Please support Joyful Heart’s efforts to end the backlog of untested rape kits by voting for us in Chase Community Giving. Voting closes at midnight on Wednesday, May 25.