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The risk we take with Charlotte’s rape kit backlog
From Maile M. Zambuto, Chief Executive Officer of the Joyful Heart Foundation, and Monika Johnson Hostler, Executive Director of the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault and the President of the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence,
Investigative Report: How Victim-Blaming Led to the Rape Kit Backlog
“I honestly understand why a lot of people don’t report rape,” Kiyona Phillips told RH Reality Check in an interview. “Because if you’re not half-dead or beat in the face or it’s not recorded in any kind of way, you really have to prove that this happened to you.” -Kiyona Phillips
Will new focus on rape kit tests put thousands behind bars?
The evidence piled up for years, abandoned in police property rooms, warehouses and crime labs. Now, tens of thousands of sexual assault kits are giving up their secrets — and rapists who've long remained free may finally face justice.
HomeFree Content States on Skates roller skaters return to Salida, raise $26,000
Three Ark Valley High Rollers are back in their street shoes after 78 days of skating from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast.
Their roller derby teammates, friends and some people who were just plain curious packed into Café Dawn Monday for their return party to see a slide show of the trio’s last 3½ months.
Joyful Heart's Response: Rice, McDonald and the Message We Need to Send
We owe it to survivors—and ourselves— to improve the criminal justice response to these crimes. To ensure that police and prosecutors make every effort to ensure survivors’ safety and to hold offenders accountable to the fullest extent possible.
We’re Letting Untested Rape Kits Languish In Warehouses And It Has Huge Consequences
Despite more than a billion dollars in public funding dedicated to helping law enforcement officials test the DNA evidence collected in rape kits, there’s still a huge backlog of untested kits collecting dust in storage facilities across the country, according to advocates who testified at a Senate committee hearing this week.
Because DNA evidence is collected on a local level, we have no idea exactly how many rape kits are languishing unopened in massive warehouses. Advocacy groups in the field believe that the total number is in the hundreds of thousands.
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Joyful Heart Reveals Rape Kit Backlog Data, but More Remains Unknown
The Joyful Heart Foundation’s Accountability Project, an initiative that’s part of the #EndTheBacklog program focused on identifying the extent of the national rape kit backlog, has released new information detailing the number of untested kits in several cities nationwide.
Through public record requests, the foundation discovered the following totals:
Charlotte, North Carolina: 1,019 untested kits
Jacksonville, Florida: 1,943 kits
Kansas City, Missouri: 1,324 kits
Portland, Oregon: 1,931 kits
San Diego, California: 2,873 kits
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Taking Sexual Assault Seriously: The Rape Kit Backlog and Human Rights
Statement for the record for Sarah Haacke Byrd, Managing Director for the Joyful Heart Foundation before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution.
Advocacy group says Kansas City has 1,324 untested rape kits
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A national rape victim advocacy group says Kansas City has 1,324 untested rape kits.
The nonprofit Joyful Heart Foundation released information Tuesday about testing backlogs in five cities. It says it hopes the cities will "take aggressive and comprehensive steps toward rape kit reform."
“We do feel that the transparency and accountability around releasing the numbers will pave the way for true reform around rape kit testing,” explained Ilse Knecht, the senior advisor for policy and advocacy for the Joyful Heart Foundation.
Despite DNA, the Rapist Got Away
Sexual assault thrives with impunity, and that’s one reason we should routinely test rape kits, to chip away at the impunity and raise the costs of rape so that it becomes less common.
