Reunion Online

Last night, rape kit reform passed in Georgia. But our advocacy to bring meaningful rape kit reform around the country still carries on.

Today I had the honor and privilege of testifying before the Hawai‘i State Legislature’s House Committee on Human Services in support of House Bill 1907, which would establish a system for tracking rape kits and mandate a deadline for the crime lab to process the evidence.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a time when communities across the state and country focus on raising visibility and creating change.  Domestic violence thrives when communities are silent, so this month is about ending that silence and encouraging everyone to take a stand.

In Hawai‘i, there are many local activities talking place to recognize Domestic Violence Awareness Month. We invite you to read about some of them and check out even more from Hawai‘i Says NO MORE.

Dear Joyful Heart Community,

We are deeply saddened by the shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina that took place on Wednesday night, and want to express our deepest condolences to the families, Black community and community at large affected by this violence.

Today, The Accountability Project, an initiative of our ENDTHEBACKLOG program, released our first findings about the extent of the backlog in four cities—Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Seattle and Tulsa.

It is with a full and grateful heart that I pause—mid-way through our tenth anniversary year and at the beginning of our new fiscal year—to reflect on the special blessings of the past twelve months.

With Mother's Day quickly approaching, I have been thinking about how I want to honor, bring joy and express gratitude to my mom and other special women in my life.

ENDTHEBACKLOG.org, Joyful Heart's website devoted to shining a light on and ending this injustice, has been nominated for a Webby Award for Best Activism website, one of the most prestigious honors a website can achieve.

How can any of us ever forget the images of trauma and pain that the media carried to us from Newtown, Connecticut last holiday season? We coped and mourned, wondered how a person survives this type of loss. We struggled to understand. We held our children ever-closer. For some, we felt a mix of gratitude to be safely with our families and stinging guilt that we were okay when others were is such deep, abiding pain.

We're proud to share the new www.ENDTHEBACKLOG.org, our website dedicated to shining a light on and ending the rape kit backlog—hundreds of thousands of rape kits collected in the aftermath of a sexual assault, sitting untested in police and crime lab storage facilities.