There is a room in every police station that is stacked with evidence that has never been touched.
On Feb. 13, 2018, Joyful Heart’s campaign “Shelved PSA” released a 60-second video about a police station’s storage facility.
In the video, a woman is sitting on the edge of a pallet that is positioned on a forklift. While the forklift moves up and down aisles of a police station storage facility, the woman is describing what her perpetrator looks like.
The forklift, which represents a police officer, places her on a shelf, representing the women whose rape kits have gone untouched for years and years.
The woman starts to yell as she is being placed on the shelf. “You’re going to catch him, right?”
Over and over she asks the question.
While this was a skit created for awareness purposes, it is a true reality for thousands of women and men.
Nearly one in five women (18.3 percent) and one in seventy-one men (1.4 percent) have been raped in their lifetime, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
In 2009, NBC’s Law & Order star, Mariska Hargitay, created a campaign through her Joyful Heart Foundation called END THE BACKLOG.
According to the website endthebacklog.org., its goal is to end the injustice of untested rape kits. The organizers are doing this in a number of ways: 1) by conducting groundbreaking research identifying the extent of the nation’s backlog and best practices for eliminating it; 2) by expanding the national dialogue on rape kit testing through increased public awareness; 3) by engaging communities and government agencies and officials; 4) and advocating for comprehensive rape kit reform legislation and policies at the local, state and federal levels.
Hargitay is pleased with the goals. “To me, the backlog is one of the clearest and most shocking demonstrations of how we regard these crimes in our society,” she said. “Testing rape kits sends a fundamental and crucial message to victims of sexual violence — You matter. What happened to you matters. Your case matters,” she said.
“For that reason,” she continued, “The Joyful Heart Foundation, which I founded in 2004, has made ending the rape kit backlog our Number One advocacy priority.”
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When I was raped in 2015, two of my friends convinced me to go to the hospital. I was in a room with a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) from 2 am. until 8 a.m., and it was the most horrific experience.
A SANE nurse is someone who has received special training so he or she can provide comprehensive care to sexual assault victims. This nurse can also conduct a forensic exam, which may provide a expert testimony if a case goes to trial.
After someone is tested, the rape kit goes to the police station and is supposed to be sent to a lab for testing. Sadly, that doesn’t always happen.
In fact, about 80 percent of all rape kits are never tested, according to a CNN investigation in 2018.
Detroit’s Wayne County Prosecutor, Kym Worthy, and Hargitay were filming a documentary called, I Am Evidence, that was released in 2017.
In the documentary, they walk by an abandoned warehouse in Detroit that is falling apart, and inside were the thousands of untested rape kits.
Robert Spada, Deputy Chief, Special Victims unit, originally found those kits in 2009.
Worthy searched through the DNA in CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) and found that of the 11,000 rape kits, 879 perpetrators were serial rapists.
According to an article by Newsweek, there are likely close to 29,000 repeat rapists in the U.S., whose identities are hiding in those crime-scene kits that are gathering dust.
Hargitay has fought for laws to be passed demanding that police test each and every rape kit. She isn’t the only one, though.
There are lots of women coming forward and sharing their stories in order to help push these efforts.
In Texas, Representative Victoria Neave passed a legislation to help fund the backlog of thousands of untested rape kits. As of January 2019, the legislation has raised more than $500,000 to help survivors of sexual assault receive justice and tackle the backlog of thousands of untested rape kits.
Among one of the untested kits was Lavinia Masters, who was raped at knifepoint by home intruders when she was 13 years old while her parents were sleeping. She took a sexual assault forensic exam, intended to catch her rapist.
Masters said she had no idea that her rape kit sat untouched on a shelf for more than 20 years.
Unfortunately, she could not press charges herself because the 10-year statute of limitations had passed, according to the article, The Lavinia Masters Act Gives Sexual Assault Survivors New Lease on Life written by Christine Bolaños, writer for NPR’s Latino USA.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the Lavinia Masters Act into law on June 4, 2019, thus creating an enforced time limit by the state for law enforcement agencies and labs to transport and test rape kits.
Even though Texas has the funds to test every single rape kit, Masters said, “There aren’t enough forensic scientists. There aren’t enough lab techs that are trained to do this.”
The fight to actually make it happen continues.
“I think rape is a gut-wrenching trauma,” said Neave. “It’s one of the most personal, intimate ways of violating a woman. I’m very honored that our state is leading the way to ensure that women in Texas, our sisters, our granddaughters, our friends, our girlfriends, are getting the justice that is long overdue.”
While Texas Representatives are fighting every day for survivors, North Lake College has a huge support group of its own for students.
If you need someone to talk to because you are afraid of telling anyone what happened, you can turn to the Counseling Services and the counselors can meet with you on a regular basis and help you figure things out.
Title IX is there if you need to report sexual harassment, including sexual assault, sexual violence or other sexual misconduct, against friends, students or employees.
The Health Center is a designated Safe Zone and is there if you need a place to regroup and talk for a little bit.
For more information on NLC resources, log onto https://www.northlakecollege.edu/services/pages/default.aspx.
