Our advocacy efforts in 2024 encompassed rape kit issues, victims’ rights, statute of limitations, victim compensation reform, and image based abuse. A total of 21 states introduced 32 bills related to Joyful Heart’s six pillars of comprehensive rape kit reform, and nine of these bills were enacted into law.
Two of the big wins this year were in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. New Jersey passed its first legislative pillar by enacting a bill (S1017), which establishes a victim’s right to know the status of their rape kit. On October 29, a tracking bill (SB920) in Pennsylvania passed after four years in the making! This bill establishes a rape kit tracking system in the state with an anonymous victim portal. We worked with the Pennsylvania Coalition to Advance Respect closely, and bill sponsors had adopted our amendments to improve last year’s bipartisan bill. With this, Pennsylvania joined the list of full reform states!
Below are other rape kit reforms:
- Vermont passed its first legislative pillar and rape kit reform initiative in years. H878 was signed into law on June 6, 2024, granting victims the right to know the status and location of their sexual assault kits.
- Louisiana SB124 requires law enforcement agencies to collect kits from medical facilities within 72 hours and mandates that unreported kits be maintained for 20 years. The bill was enacted into law on June 18, 2024.
- Nebraska legislators passed LB870, a bill that improves its victim’s rights language by creating a requirement for law enforcement to notify victims six weeks prior to the destruction of a rape kit and allowing victims to request preservation for another 20 years.
- Kentucky, New York, and Washington legislatures allocated funding for rape kit reform, totaling $4.45 million.
With these wins, we are closer to our goal of all 50 states achieving all 6 pillars. We remain committed to advocating for states to adopt these pillars and ensuring their implementation.
In addition to new laws, states implemented rape kit reforms through other means: Alaska, North Carolina and West Virginia announced ending their backlog, while Louisiana, Maryland and South Carolina’s statewide rape kit tracking systems went live. As part of our advocacy efforts, we submitted letters of support for 22 bills, provided written or oral testimonies for four bills, and continue to fight for reform in all the states listed below and at the federal level.
Maine is still the only state without any rape kit reform. After two years of advocacy and pushing a rape kit bill through both chambers for the first time in 2024, we will be back in the state to continue our stakeholder engagement and advocacy efforts for the upcoming 2025 session.
As of January 2025, 21 states and Washington, D.C. achieved all six pillars of reform and 11 states are one-pillar short of full reform. 163.4 million people live in states with full reform. More than 109,000 reported rapes every year in these states are covered under comprehensive rape kit bills.
In addition to rape kit reform, states passed laws to improve other aspects of survivors’ access to justice:
- Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Washington extended or eliminated statutes of limitations in sexual assault cases.
- Indiana, Kansas, Maine, New York, and Tennessee improved access to victim compensation.
- California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and West Virginia passed laws to improve legal protections for survivors of image based abuse.
Raising Public Awareness
This year, through public awareness events, we continued to raise awareness on issues around rape kits and image-based abuse. We:
- Organized a virtual summit on image based abuse,
- Spoke at a panel at the UN CSW about rape kit reform,
- Participated in the VAWA 30th Year Celebration events in D.C.,
- Organized a summit on drug facilitated sexual assault for Manhattan-based criminal justice professionals,
- Presented our work and expertise to a group of delegates from Moldova, to the regional Soroptimist International chapter, and to our partner groups in Puerto Rico,
- Organized a day-long wellness event for lab technicians at the NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (city crime lab), and
- Spoke at the NYC Sexual Violence Response Conference.
Federal Work
We were engaged in efforts to create a federal prohibition on the nonconsensual disclosure of intimate images (NDII) and to give law enforcement the tools they need to protect adults and children and bring offenders to accountability. We raised awareness and provided support around the SHIELD Act, the DEFIANCE Act, and the TAKE IT DOWN Act.
In April, we submitted public comments in response to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding the VOCA Victim Compensation Grant Program, suggesting changes that would make the guidelines more trauma-informed and survivor-centered, such as removing all application deadlines.
We continued our advocacy for funding for crime labs and pushed for the reauthorization of the Debbie Smith Act. The Act provides federal grants to state crime labs for DNA backlogs, generally with a focus on prioritizing rape kits.
Looking ahead in 2025
Our rape kit reform work will continue in multiple states, including in Alaska, Maine, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. We will focus on pushing for Maine’s first rape kit reform bill, codifying Alaska’s and Arizona’s tracking systems into law, extending the tracking system to hospitals in New York, and granting survivors the right to know the status of their kits in Alaska, Florida, Georgia, and Indiana. We will also continue to work on image based abuse laws across the country. We are looking forward to another successful year with the support of our community. Thank you again for your advocacy and for showing your support so loudly and clearly. We couldn’t have done it without you.