MILLIONS PLEDGED TO TEST RAPE KITS
Funds to help end backlog of 70,000 kits
NEWYORK Vice President Joe Biden and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. on Thursday announced they will devote $79 million to combat the accumulation of untested sexual assault evidence held by police agencies across the country.
The Manhattan district attorney and U.S. Justice Department will provide grants to 43 law enforcement agencies in 27 states to pay for crime-lab processing of about 70,000 rape kits, expediting a process that could identify perpetrators.
Vance called the grants “the single largest contribution toward ending the rape kit backlog that has ever been made.”
New York was the first big city to alleviate its rape-kits backlog more than 10 years ago. Now, Vance’s office will provide $38 million for rape kit testing to 32 jurisdictions, including police in Tallahassee; Riverside, Calif.; and Flint, Mich.
A USA TODAY Media Network investigation in July identified at least 70,000 untested rape kits collected by more than 1,000 law enforcement agencies. Across the nation’s 18,000 police agencies, the count of untested rape kits likely reaches hundreds of thousands. “What stands in the way of testing them is money and the will to get the job done,” Vance said.
Rape kits contain forensic material collected from survivors through a painstaking process that can lead to DNA evidence that can identify perpetrators and catch serial attackers.
“DNA technology is the guilty person’s worst enemy,” Biden said. “It reduces the total number of victims. ... But the second thing it does is it sets women free who’ve been victimized.”
Natasha Alexenko shared her experience as “a survivor of sexual assault and a survivor of the rape kit backlog.” In 1993, she was raped at gunpoint. “I wanted immediately to take a shower. But rather than do that, I wanted to go to the hospital, get a rape kit done so that I could aid law enforcement in putting this monster behind bars. ... My rape kit sat for 9 1/2 years, collecting dust with 17,000 other rape kits.”