For Immediate Release: September 19, 2019
Contact: Melissa Schwartz, media@endthebacklog.org
NEW YORK – The Joyful Heart Foundation, which has for years advocated for rape kit reform in North Carolina, today praised Governor Roy Cooper’s signing of the Survivor Act (H.B. 29) into law. For the first time, this will mandate the testing of the more than 15,000 untested rape kits in local law enforcement storage and expedite the handling of future kits to help ensure a backlog does not occur again.
“Behind every rape kit is a person—a sexual assault survivor—waiting for justice,” said Ilse Knecht, Joyful Heart’s Director of Policy and Advocacy. “The rape kit backlog represents a failure of the criminal justice system to protect survivors and hold perpetrators accountable. We can and must do better. When jurisdictions test every kit, they solve crimes, bring answers and a path to justice for survivors, take criminals off the streets, and exonerate the wrongly convicted.”
Championed by State Senators Danny Britt and Warren Daniel, State Representatives Jamie Boles and Bill Richardson, and North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, H.B. 29 sets new standards for the handling and processing of DNA evidence gathered in a sexual assault kit. For rape kits collected after July 1, 2019, it will require a medical facility or other agency collecting kits to notify law enforcement within 24 hours of collection and law enforcement to pick up the kit within seven days and submit it to the lab within 45 days. For kits collected before January 1, 2018, the law now requires any law enforcement agency that has such kits in its possession to establish a review team to survey every backlogged kit and after considering a list of factors, determine a testing priority. The state crime lab must test kits “as soon as practicable” and would require any law enforcement agency that receives an actionable Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) hit from the lab shall report to the lab any arrest or conviction in connection with that hit. Lastly, the bill would require the North Carolina Department of Justice, the state sexual assault coalition, and other stakeholders to create sexual assault training and response programs.
Testing all rape kits not only makes communities safer, it can also save millions of dollars.According to researchers from Case Western Reserve University, testing just 4,300 previously unsubmitted kits in Cleveland saved $38.7 million, or $8,893 per tested sexual assault kit.
Joyful Heart has developed a national campaign to pass comprehensive rape kit reform legislation in all 50 states framed around six pillars for reform. Learn more about efforts in the state at: http://www.endthebacklog.org/north-carolina
“We are grateful to the elected leaders who remained committed to seeing this important law enacted and implemented,” added Knecht. “We look forward to continued work with the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault, the Attorney General’s office, and other local stakeholders to bring further reform to the state.”
Joyful Heart has created the premier national resource about the rape kit backlog, which includes an interactive map and resources for survivors, legislators, and the media. Learn more at: ENDTHEBACKLOG.org.