GOP’s rape kit legislation blasted
Sexual assault victims, advocates oppose bill
MADISON - Victims of sexual assault and prosecutors of the crime accused Republican lawmakers Wednesday of purposefully blocking legislation that would stop rapists.
Assembly Republicans are moving forward with a proposal that would make sure sexual assault evidence is processed. But it’s different from a bill the state Senate already passed, doesn’t have support from the state Department of Justice tasked with overseeing the testing and includes provisions that are well known to divide lawmakers.
“This isn’t a political issue for me. I considered myself a Republican and I cannot support this solely Republican bill, or the politics replacing victims rights for justice with a win for their team,” Jacqueline Jaske, a victim of sexual assault from West Allis, said Wednesday at the state Capitol ahead of a public hearing on the bill Assembly Republicans hope will replace the proposal already backed by the Senate.
With overwhelming support, the Senate in October approved Senate Bill 200, which is meant to prevent backlogs of processing sexual assault kits. It would put in place rules for who is responsible for submitting the kits to the State Crime Laboratory and the timelines they must follow.
But the measure has stalled in the Assembly because Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, the New Berlin Republican who leads the Assembly Health Committee, has declined to hold a hearing on the measure.
Instead, Sanfelippo held a hearing Wednesday on a new bill introduced by GOP Rep. David Steffen, who also authored Senate Bill 200, that also sets procedures for collecting and storing sexual assault kits.
The new bill also would require the Department of Justice to provide reports to the Legislature every year, give victims the ability to anonymously track their sexual assault kits and give them the right to have evidence tested within 90 days and be given notice 60 days before evidence was destroyed.
It would ban the sale of at-home sexual assault kits, ban charging victims for pregnancy tests and require law enforcement to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when undocumented immigrants
were arrested for sexual assault. In addition, the bill would allow students who were sexually assaulted by a fellow student or school employee to automatically qualify for the state’s school voucher programs.
Attorney General Josh Kaul on Wednesday called the new bill “a mess” and said it creates unfunded mandates because the proposal lacks funding, and also requires reporting of information that could erode victim privacy. Kaul also said the bill provides an incentive for school district officials to abdicate their responsibility of providing security for students who are victims of assault.
“The responsibility is supposed to be on the schools. … it shouldn’t be the victim has to go away from his or her friends,” Kaul said. “You’re allowing schools to say if you have a problem you go somewhere else.”
Bill co-author Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, said the provision is meant to give victims a fresh start, citing a friend of hers who was assaulted and later died by suicide in part because of scrutiny from other students who learned about the rape.
Ian Henderson of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault also said the provision requiring police to contact immigration authorities would likely result in fewer women who live here illegally reporting assaults. Steffen told the committee Wednesday he drafted a new proposal to replace the bill that already passed the Senate to get something to Gov. Tony Evers’ desk.
He said bills typically don’t make it to the floor of the Assembly without support from at least 50 Republican Assembly lawmakers, suggesting the original bill didn’t have the required level of GOP support in that house.
“It is really a new level of low. Our lives are not a game. My daughter’s life is not a game.”
Amy Dean Sauk City mother at the state Capitol Wednesday
“I didn’t want to go another session without this getting done,” Steffen said. “I don’t want legislation that could be very impactful to not get across a goal line simply because it’s not 100 percent.”
Rep. Lisa Subeck, D-Madison, said by including provisions that are known to be politically divisive, GOP lawmakers were throwing victims under the bus.
Amy Dean of Sauk City told lawmakers Wednesday to back Steffen’s original bill. “It is really a new level of low. Our lives are not a game. My daughter’s life is not a game,” she said. “Wisconsin is watching this game and we are a smart electorate and we do not play games with our children’s safety.”
Contact Molly Beck at molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.