Faster rape-kit testing approved
Santa Clara County supports new policies; examinations must be completed within 30 days after collection
Amid heightened awareness across the country about sexual assault, physical evidence collected from victims of rapes and other sex crimes in Santa Clara County could be tested four times faster than required by the state after the approval of a new policy this week by the Board of Supervisors.
Examinations of what are known as SART kits will now have to be completed within 30 days after law enforcement collects them, under the mandate passed Tuesday.
Currently, state law recommends that the kits be submitted to a crime lab within 20 days of a reported sexual assault and tested within 120 days. A bill authored by state Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino, would make those hard deadlines. SB 1449 passed through the Senate last month and is currently being considered in the Assembly.
“I love the idea of raising the bar on behalf of victims nationwide,” said Supervisor Cindy Chavez. “There is tremendous respect for their experiences and for them standing up and giving evidence.”
The Joyful Heart Foundation, a national advocacy group combating sexual assault that has helped craft related legislation, lauded the speedier testing goal.
“Santa Clara County’s news is very encouraging. The sooner rape kits are tested, the sooner dangerous perpetrators are taken off the street, and the closer survivors are to a pathway to justice and healing,” Ilse Knecht, the group’s director of policy and advocacy, said in a statement. “Each untested rape kit, sitting in a lawenforcement facility, represents a tragic missed opportunity.”
The board Tuesday also directed more than $600,000 toward clearing 200 to 300 untested kits currently in county possession, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, which operates the county crime lab. They also announced plans to hire two additional analysts who will join an existing team dedicated to kit testing.
Assistant District Attorney Terry Harman said the renewed efforts are part of a philosophical shift from an earlier standard where SART kits were tested based on whether they were needed in an investigation or prosecution.
“What we’re embracing now is a much broader question: Is there
a legal reason not to test the kit?” Harman said. “This has allowed us to really examine a better way to do things at the crime lab as it relates to SART kit testing.”
Harman noted that the 200-plus figure for untested kits refers specifically to those currently at the crime lab. She said they are separate from a broader county backlog that counts hundreds or thousands of kits sitting in police warehouses that were not tested because they either were not needed for an investigation or the victim did not consent.
A 2013 report by ABC7 found at least 1,800 such instances at SJPD, and Joyful Heart estimates the state backlog at more than 13,000 kits, based on available records and public-records requests. Nationally, the number of untested rape kits is estimated to be as high as 400,000, according to the foundation.
Heather Marlowe, cofounder of the watchdog group People for the Enforcement of Rape Laws, took issue with parsing the queue in the crime lab from the larger numbers of untested kits.
“If the county of Santa Clara is truly committed to clearing its untested rape kits, they can start by being transparent with the real numbers of kits they have stockpiled,” Marlowe said.
But what those exact numbers are remain unclear. For instance, in San Jose, formal record keeping of SART kit collection goes back only as far as 2012. Harman said her office is currently conducting an audit aimed at evaluating warehoused kits for testing consideration.
That issue is at the heart of a bill passed by the state Assembly and currently going through the state Senate. AB 3118, authored by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, would compel a statewide audit by 2019 of police agencies, hospitals, crime labs and any other facility that handles or stores SART kits to get a definitive count of the backlog of untested kits.
Even then, Marlowe said, the policies and legislation created by county and state leaders have to be paired with more fundamental reform in rape and sexual-assault investigations.
“The relevant question is not how long it takes for rape kits to be tested but whether police are properly documenting and investigating rape complaints,” she said. “Police can test a rape kit but if no proper investigation was conducted, testing is merely symbolic to the complainant.”
Chavez said she appreciated the sentiment and asserted that Santa Clara County has been progressive in the area, and that the kit-testing policy is just a component.
“We have to get better at addressing this issue, period,” she said. “This is a concrete demonstration that as a community, we’re moving in that direction. My expectation is that the community will push us to do more, and that’s how it should be.”