Cities, police renew focus on testing backlogged rape kits

Editor’s note: First of two parts on the drive to unlock the secrets of thousands of rape kits that had been left to gather dust – and to bring the rapists to justice.

The evidence piled up for years, abandoned in police property rooms, warehouses and crime labs. Now, tens of thousands of sexual assault kits are giving up their secrets – and rapists who’ve long remained free may finally face justice.

A dramatic shift is taking hold across the country as police and prosecutors scramble to process these kits and use DNA matches to track down sexual predators, many of whom attacked more women while evidence of their crimes languished in storage. Lawmakers, meanwhile, are proposing reforms to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

“There’s definitely momentum,” said Sarah Haacke Byrd, managing director of the Joyful Heart Foundation, an advocacy group working on the issue. “In the last year, we really are seeing the tide turn where federal and state governments are offering critically needed leadership and critically needed resources to fix the problem.”

In Cleveland, the county prosecutor’s office has indicted more than 300 rape suspects since 2013, based on newly tested DNA evidence from old kits. Authorities expect to eventually charge 1,000.

In Detroit, the Wayne County prosecutor’s office is seeking donations to help analyze, investigate and prosecute cases from the results of more than 11,000 kits that had been untested. Hamstrung by city and county money troubles, the prosecutor has formed an unusual partnership with two nonprofits to raise $10 million. So far, contributions have poured in from corporations and residents from all 50 states and eight foreign countries.

There’s a new urgency, too, in statehouses from Alaska to Maryland, where legislators in more than 20 states are considering – and in some cases, passing – laws that include auditing all kits and deadlines for submitting and processing DNA evidence.

The high-profile campaign also is getting a big financial boost: At least $76 million – more than half from the feds – will be available for testing, prosecution and reforms.

In some cases, it’s simply too late for justice because statutes of limitations have expired. In others, investigators may have to wade through old, often incomplete, police files, search for witnesses and suspects, confront fading memories and persuade survivors to reopen painful chapters of their lives. It will be a lot slower-going than it is on those prime-time police procedurals.

But once all the kits are processed, the potential is enormous – both for communities and rape survivors.

Uncovering a pattern

In resurrecting old crimes, investigators have detected an alarming pattern: Many rapists are repeat offenders.

In Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland, about 30 percent of cases that have developed from testing so far are serial rape suspects. One of them, Robert Green, assaulted seven women over nearly a decade as evidence went unprocessed. He pleaded guilty last fall and was sentenced to up to 135 years in prison.

In Wayne County, home to Detroit, authorities say 288 potential serial rapists have been found among the kits tested. Among the cases to surface is Reginald Holland, who raped a woman in 2005. His identity wasn’t known then. Three years later, Holland’s DNA was entered in a national database on an unrelated case. By the time his first victim’s sexual assault kit was tested in 2012, he’d assaulted four more women. In 2014, he was sentenced to life in prison.

“Yes, it is an embarrassment,” county Prosecutor Kym Worthy said of these cases. “It shows that we, as this country, do not respect rape victims to the extent that we respect other victims.”

Her office is now working with the Michigan Women’s Foundation and the Detroit Crime Commission to raise money to complete the testing and investigation of kits and bring suspects to trial.

“These results are coming very fast and furious,” she adds. “Because we don’t have the staff of investigators and prosecutors … in essence we’re developing another backlog.”

President Barack Obama’s 2015 budget set aside $41 million to help test kits and prosecute perpetrators. This spring, Vice President Joe Biden announced the 2016 fiscal year budget includes a proposal for another $41 million to chip away at the backlog, along with $20 million to develop reforms that will prevent a recurrence.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. also has pledged up to $35 million – money his office received from asset forfeiture cases – that he estimates will be enough to test 70,000 kits.

“We felt this was an essential investment,” Vance said. “Rapists are sex offenders who are moving from one location to another. There will be crimes that are going to be solved in other states that are linked to New York.”

That’s already happened. DNA evidence from newly tested Detroit-area rape kits has been linked to crimes in 31 states – New York included – and the District of Columbia.

Multiple causes

The new attention to sexual assault kits stems from a combination of factors, but the full scope of the problem is something of a mystery.

No federal agency tracks untested sexual assault kits, but Joyful Heart estimates it’s in the hundreds of thousands.

Dallas; Salt Lake City; Portland, Oregon; and Kansas City, Missouri, have reported untested kits. The Las Vegas metro police department has one of the larger backlogs – more than 5,600 kits – and plans to test all of them.

The question remains: How did this happen in the first place?

“There is no smoking gun that you can point to in any city in America to say this is the one reason why we have this accumulation of kits that have been untested,” said Doug McGowen, the coordinator of a Memphis rape kit task force, who notes that DNA wasn’t widely used until the late 1990s.

DNA proved to be a turning point, but Houston Assistant Police Chief Mary Lentschke notes that police still faced two big obstacles: a shortage of both money and crime lab staff. It has cost $500 to $1,500 to test and analyze each kit. And as DNA became more common in crime-solving, labs were overwhelmed with requests for testing for homicides as well.

“When you don’t have the funding and you don’t have the staffing, you make decisions on a case-by-case basis,” she said.

Some police departments haven’t tested kits if the woman knew the assailant, she didn’t want to pursue charges or the attacker confessed.

Rebecca Campbell, a Michigan State University professor who has consulted and trained police departments on trauma and sexual assault, says skepticism and, at times, hostility toward women who’ve been raped have added to the problem.

Police often “don’t understand trauma,” she said. “They often expect a certain set of behaviors: crying and visible signs of distress. If a victim is very calm and quiet, they think there’s no possible way she could have been raped. … Law enforcement, generally, they just do not believe victims. They believe that they’re lying, that they’re making a story up to cover up for bad behavior.”

But some say progress is being made in Detroit and other cities with new police training and rules for handling kits, improved understanding of trauma and legal reforms that will prevent new backlogs.

“Police have come a long way,” said Sgt. Amy Mills, head of the Dallas police sex assault unit.