THE JOYFUL HEART FOUNDATION WITH AUDITOR GENERAL EUGENE DEPASQUALE OF PENNSYLVANIA
The author of this post is Auditor General Eugene DePasquale of Pennsylvania. In 2016, Auditor General DePasquale issued a special report describing the backlog problem in the state and issues of non-compliance of a rape kit inventory law passed in the state in 2015. This was a crucial step in the process of addressing Pennsylvania’s sexual assault kit backlog. The post details the state’s efforts to clear its backlog of untested kits.
After Samantha F. was raped at a party when she was a teen, the southcentral Pennsylvania resident did everything she was supposed to do to achieve justice: She reported it to police, underwent an exam with a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner to collect evidence for a sexual assault kit, gave permission for the kit to be tested, identified her attackers to police, and stayed in contact with the detective running the investigation.
Ten years later, Samantha has yet to hear a word about what happened to her case – or to her sexual assault evidence kit.
Her rape kit might have been tested right away and yielded usable evidence, including DNA that could be uploaded into the federal database, CODIS. Or, it might have been tested right away and yielded no usable evidence. It might have been destroyed. The kit also might have been tested sometime in the past four years, as Pennsylvania has worked diligently to clear the more than 3,200 untested rape kits that were sitting on police department and crime lab shelves as of December 31, 2015. Tragically, the police department has no records showing what happened to Samantha’s kit.
The journey to end Pennsylvania’s backlog of untested rape kits began in 2015, when a state law was passed that required a comprehensive count of the state’s untested rape kits, including those identified as “backlogged” – meaning they had been awaiting testing for 12 months or more.
That first count of more than 3,200, issued in April 2016, was merely a rough estimate of the state’s kit inventory.
I call it a rough estimate for a few reasons. First, fewer than half of the state’s 1,100+ law enforcement agencies complied with the new law and reported the kits in their possession. Second, we know that widespread confusion existed among law enforcement agencies over what categories of kits were to be counted, which led to reporting errors.
In September 2016, I issued a special report that pointed out these problems. I also offered 10 recommendations to improve both the accuracy of the next year’s count and the work being done to get all untested kits to a crime lab to be tested.
Thanks to access to federal funding, such as Sexual Assault Kit Initiative grants; funding made available through the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office; and funding made available by Gov. Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania crime labs were able to prioritize testing rape kits – some of which, we discovered, dated to the 1990s.
As of December 31, 2019, Pennsylvania had 94 backlogged kits that have received victim consent for testing. I have long said that we need to get that number as close to zero as possible – and I believe we’re approaching that goal. Thanks to pressure brought by reporting on the problem and the efforts of advocates, Pennsylvania law now requires all newly collected rape kits that receive victim consent for testing to be submitted within 15 days to the proper crime lab, which then has 180 days to provide results.
Though no one organization in Pennsylvania tracks how many offenders have been charged as a result of testing thousands of backlogged kits, we know anecdotally that charges have been filed in several cold cases in multiple counties.
Unfortunately, so far Samantha’s attackers have not been among those brought to justice.
Last year, Samantha stood beside me and bravely told her story as we called for Pennsylvania to adopt a rape kit tracking system, such as the one the Idaho State Police developed and offered for free to other public agencies.
Just as Samantha is still waiting for answers about her case, we’re still waiting for Pennsylvania to adopt a tracking system. If we can use technology to track the whereabouts of packages and food deliveries, there’s no reason we can’t provide a system to let survivors know exactly where their evidence kits are in the testing process.
Ending the backlog has been a journey in Pennsylvania, but the work is not over yet. Survivors of sexual assault, like Samantha, deserve to know the status of their case and their kit. They deserve to be empowered to find peace and, if they choose, seek justice for what has happened to them.