Advocate pushes for rape victim rights laws
Danielle Tudor’s path to reforming Oklahoma’s rape victim laws began one night, 38 years ago, as she sat at home alone watching a movie.
She was a high school senior in Portland, Oregon, living in a neighborhood that had been targeted by a man known as the city’s “jogger rapist.” The attacker kicked down her door and the two locked eyes. She ran. He followed. She couldn’t get away. He did.
Tudor was 17; she’d already planned her wedding and dreamed of having a family when she grew up.
“I was that girl that definitely was saving herself,” said Tudor. “I knew how I wanted everything to be, and that rape just basically took all of that from me.”
That night, after filing a report and giving evidence over to police, Tudor lay in her darkened bedroom crying to God. She had a simple prayer, “Asking Lord help me get through this, and as I get through this,
I will help other rape victims.”
She later became an outspoken advocate for victims in her home state, but she moved to Oklahoma after her son’s family planted roots in Tulsa. She was dismayed to learn about the prevalence of sexual assault in Oklahoma and how state law treats it.
According to the state Health Department, the rate of rape and attempted rape has been 35 to 45 percent higher than the national average over the past decade. Data from state investigators show that the number of reported rapes have increased each year since 2011.
In Oklahoma, If police collect a rape kit, there’s no law requiring it to be added to a database of other evidence. Prosecutors only have 12 years to prosecute rape, while 30 other states have no statute of limitations.
“I don’t believe justice by any rape survivor should be dictated by your ZIP code,” said Tudor. “Depending on where you’re raped depends on what rights you have.”
Oregon’s statute of limitations had already passed when Tudor’s rapist was identified seven years later, so he could not be prosecuted for that crime.
Tudor said rape kits help police investigate connections between sexual assault reports.
“We’re starting there because we don’t know what we have in this state,” she said. “We really have no idea how many rape kits we have here in the state sitting on shelves, not being processed.”
Changing the system
Since coming to Oklahoma, she’s sat down with law enforcement, prosecutors and victim advocates; her work has led to three bills she’s pushing this year, including one that would trigger an audit of untested rape kits. The bill’s author, state Sen. Kay Floyd, D-Oklahoma City, said the creation of a twoyear task force will begin with a statewide research effort.
“The first order of business will be to do an inventory of all the rape kits we have in the state,” Floyd said. “In the second year, the task force report will be the basis for moving forward on how we, as a state, choose to handle those kits. We’re hopeful that the outcome will be that we are able to have those kits tested.”
Tudor is also lobbying for legislation to eliminate the statute of limitations. That way, if an old rape kit points to a suspect, prosecutors can begin work on closing cold cases.
Another bill would guarantee victims the right to know the progress and results of their rape kit. The proposed law would also give victims the right to have a copy of their police report and the right to have a victims advocate present at every phase of their case, including the rape kit examination. It prohibits first responders from discouraging a rape victim from having a rape kit completed.
The bills are still in the committee phase and could be heard sometime in the next few weeks. Tudor said she wants to hear more from victims in Oklahoma as she lobbies the Legislature.
“I know when I first started reaching out to stakeholders over a year ago, I was met with skepticism,” she said. “They couldn’t understand why I would care how rape survivors were or were not helped in the criminal justice process in Okla-