For Immediate Release: September 4, 2024
Contact: Olivia Hall, media@endthebacklog.org
NEW YORK – Today, the Joyful Heart Foundation celebrates Governor Murphy’s signing of New Jersey bill S1017/A3748 into law. This bi-partisan bill dramatically extends protections throughout the state through ensuring that every survivor who undergoes a sexual assault kit exam is entitled to notification about the status of their kits. With the passage of this bill, New Jersey fulfills one of Joyful Heart Foundation’s six pillars of rape kit reform to “implement mechanisms for survivors to easily find out about the status of their kits”.
“This is a significant step forward for New Jersey,” says Ilse Knecht, Director of Policy and Advocacy of the Joyful Heart Foundation. “After an assault, survivors go through what is often an hours-long process of having evidence collected from their bodies–which has now become a crime scene. Too often do these survivors go through this arduous and often re-traumatizing process and then never hear anything about where this evidence ends up. Thank you, Governor Murphy and the New Jersey Coallition Against Sexual Assault, for taking the steps needed to rectify this systemic issue that too often hinders the healing process for survivors.”
This law is not only significant, but it is also supported by evidence-based research. In 2016, Joyful Heart released Navigating Notification, a study on victim notification that found access to information about the status of their cases can promote healing for survivors of sexual assault, and that the lack of knowledge can be harmful to their wellbeing. With the passage of this law, New Jersey signals to survivors that they take what happened to them seriously and understand how healing it can be to have access to their kit information.
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End the Backlog is a program of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a national nonprofit organization founded by producer, director, actress, and advocate Mariska Hargitay with the mission to transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, and support survivors’ healing.