Rape Support Group
If you or someone you know has been the victim of rape, this is the place to find support and get advice. If you want, discuss your experience, share your feelings, and meet others going through a similar situation.
To see what a forensic "rape kit" includes, see this photo:
http://tinyurl.com/595o8n
Women have the right to report a rape and seek medical care without talking to police. Women also have the right to medical care without divulging their identities or filing a report.
Every two minutes, someone is raped in the United States. Every year, more than 200,000 rape victims, mostly women, report their rapes to police. Most consent to the creation of a rape kit, an invasive process for collecting physical evidence (including DNA material) of the assault that can take up to six hours. What most victims don't know is that in thousands of cases, that evidence sits untested in police evidence lockers.
The backlog of untested evidence gained national attention in 2001 when Debbie Smith, a rape victim, testified before Congress. The Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program was started in 2004 with the goal of processing the nearly 400,000 untested rape kits nationwide. But the program has been expanded to allow states to test backlogged DNA evidence from any crime. Even as the proportion of rape victims who report their assaults is increasing, the processing of rape evidence is still backlogged -- and the arrest rate of rapists is decreasing.
Most states are not required to notify victims if their evidence has not been tested, so people usually have no idea whether their kits have been processed. Many victims assume that silence from the police means that their kit did not yield helpful information. A much-delayed National Institute of Justice report on the state of the rape-kit backlog is due to be submitted to Congress in the fall; experts on the crime expect it to show that a significant backlog remains.
http://tinyurl.com/595o8n
Women have the right to report a rape and seek medical care without talking to police. Women also have the right to medical care without divulging their identities or filing a report.
Every two minutes, someone is raped in the United States. Every year, more than 200,000 rape victims, mostly women, report their rapes to police. Most consent to the creation of a rape kit, an invasive process for collecting physical evidence (including DNA material) of the assault that can take up to six hours. What most victims don't know is that in thousands of cases, that evidence sits untested in police evidence lockers.
The backlog of untested evidence gained national attention in 2001 when Debbie Smith, a rape victim, testified before Congress. The Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program was started in 2004 with the goal of processing the nearly 400,000 untested rape kits nationwide. But the program has been expanded to allow states to test backlogged DNA evidence from any crime. Even as the proportion of rape victims who report their assaults is increasing, the processing of rape evidence is still backlogged -- and the arrest rate of rapists is decreasing.
Most states are not required to notify victims if their evidence has not been tested, so people usually have no idea whether their kits have been processed. Many victims assume that silence from the police means that their kit did not yield helpful information. A much-delayed National Institute of Justice report on the state of the rape-kit backlog is due to be submitted to Congress in the fall; experts on the crime expect it to show that a significant backlog remains.
ask Congress to:
* Require that states that receive grants to use at least 30 percent of the money to pay for testing backlogged rape kits
* Build in accountability by requiring that states report how many rape kits are tested annually
* Lift restrictions against states using the grants to pay private labs for DNA testing; crime lab directors across the country have cited this as a reason that they have not applied for or been able to fully spend their grant money
* Remove an amendment that would require states to expand their DNA databases to include all felons and certain arrestees. Adding people who have not been convicted of any crime to DNA databases raises civil rights and civil liberties concerns, adding unnecessary controversy to the program.
I asked if my rape kit was tested, and no one ever gave me an answer. They just said "Well I'm sure they would..."... but no one gave or explained any results to me...
Sorry for the rant. But helpful post. Thanks.