Rape Scandal that Puts You at Risk by Linda Fairstein

Author:Linda Fairstein [Fairstein, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7328-9
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-08-14T16:02:00+00:00

Behind the Backlog

Ideally, after a victim undergoes a rape exam, her rape kit should be sent to a police forensics lab, where it would be immediately tested for DNA. That DNA is then run through a criminal DNA database to see if a match is found.

But as Helena’s case reveals, this doesn’t necessarily happen in a timely way or even at all—because the rap kit either never makes it out of police storage or sits for years at a forensics lab.

Part of the problem comes down to a lack of money to pay for forensic testing. “The cost of testing each rape kit can run from $1,000 to $1,500, depending on how much evidence was collected during the exam,” explains Scott Berkowitz, president of the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), a national sexual-assault advocacy group. Although Congress has been distributing funds to cash-strapped police departments since 2000 to help pay for testing, it’s eased, but hardly eliminated, the glut.

Even more upsetting is that the backlog reflects a lack of understanding about the nature of rapists. Rape tends to be a serial crime. Like Charles Courtney, most rapists will attack again. Knowing this, police should put their resources into testing rape victims’ DNA in order to ID a suspect quickly and arrest him before more women become victims.

Another factor not to be discounted, particularly in Helena’s case, is what appears to be disorganization of the police. Helena’s kit didn’t undergo testing for seven years, and even after a match was made, she was never told—an innocent oversight, maybe … or a sign of a bungled investigation.

In some locations, law enforcement has recognized the importance of testing. New York City is one such place. In September 2000, I stood beside Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and NYPD Commissioner Howard Safir when they announced that New York would be the first jurisdiction in the country to fund the outsourcing of the 16,000 untested kits that had piled up during the 1990s. The idea that we could provide answers to some of those many victims and identify offenders who thought they had beaten the rap were strong motivators. New York has not had a backlog since, and even better, the arrest rate for rape in New York has jumped from about 40 percent to 70 percent thanks to the evidence culled from the testing.

Throughout the country, pockets of progress have clearly been made—from Palm Beach, Florida, to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the backlog is overwhelming in many urban areas, such as Detroit, where city officials recently discovered more than 11,000 untested kits they didn’t know they had. And Houston has been grappling with more than 4,000 untested kits, with some reportedly dating back to the 1980s.

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