Reunion Online

NEW YORK — Mariska Hargitay thinks Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has played a huge role in educating people on sexual violence, but believes there is still a lot of work to do.

The star of the TV drama spoke as the NBC show celebrated its 20th season Thursday at the Tribeca TV Festival.

Some of the most vocal proponents of the #MeToo movement and droves of other women have come to the defense of Christine Blasey Ford after President Donald Trump questioned her credibility and wondered why she didn’t report her sexual assault at the time she said it happened.

A bill requiring law enforcement agencies and laboratories to promptly analyze all newly collected rape kit evidence advanced to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk Friday.

The state Senate and Assembly unanimously approved SB 1449 authored by Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino, according to a press release provided by Leyva’s office.

Under the legislation, newly collected rape kits would have to be sent to a lab within 20 days and tested no later than 120 days after receipt in order to prevent backlogs of forensic evidence.

In late April, at the height of her successful campaign for district attorney, interim DA Summer Stephan announced she would spend $1 million to test 1,000 rape kits.

By the end of August, only 200 kits will have been tested by Bode Cellmark Forensics, a private lab in Virginia, said a spokesman for LabCorp, Bode’s corporate parent.

Through public records requests, End the Backlog estimates that more than 13,000 kits are sitting untested on the shelves of California law enforcement—but it still won’t have a complete number unless jurisdictions are mandated to have them.

The Me Too movement has touched almost every industry in the past year, and state legislatures have been under growing pressure to curb sexual assault and harassment in private workplaces and within their own chambers. But has the reckoning had an impact on the law?

Early signs point to yes.

California legislators this week set aside partisanship to move toward reducing the state’s backlog of untested rape kits, with both houses passing separate bills targeting the problem.

While California may have a reputation for progressive policies and a history of tough-on-crime laws, Los Angeles and L.A. County at one point had 12,000 untested rape kits, which law enforcement only caught up on in 2011.

In February, Stein announced that a statewide inventory revealed 15,160 untested rape kits. That backlog prompted him to seek $2 million from lawmakers this year to begin the outsourcing of testing of 2,800 of those kits containing DNA samples and other evidence collected during medical procedures conducted after attacks.

In Minnesota's most ambitious effort to process untested rape kits, the Duluth Police Department has eliminated its entire backlog and submitted 415 kits for laboratory testing, a step that could open the door to justice for scores of sexual assault victims.

The kits, sitting in storage for as long as 25 years, were inventoried in 2015 after the Legislature ordered a one-time audit of all untested kits held by law enforcement agencies across the state. Departments reported more than 3,400 untested kits; Duluth had the most, with more than 550.

On May 25, the state Senate Appropriations Committee will decide whether to advance two bills that would demand the speedy testing of California’s large backlog of rape kits and the timely testing of all newly collected rape kits.

AB3118 requires the first-ever statewide inventory of untested rape kits in California. At present, state officials have no idea how many kits are sitting on shelves across the state.