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.

With this bill, Hawai‘i would take  a giant step forward for survivors of sexual assault. The stakes could not be higher. In Hawai‘i, one in seven women have been raped. That’s 67,000 women. Every survivor deserves the opportunity for healing and justice.

Through our ENDTHEBACKLOG program, Joyful Heart is the leading national organization working to eliminate the backlog of hundreds of thousands untested rape kits in the United States. Joyful Heart’s national advocacy for comprehensive rape kit reform is driven by the ambitious goal of ensuring that every kit collected is tested. We need to make sure this is true in Hawai‘i too. I am so proud that our state—Joyful Heart’s birthplace—is joining a growing list of states making real reforms to end the backlog. 

Mandatory rape kit testing sends the message that we take sexual assault seriously—that survivors and their cases matter. It demonstrates a commitment to do everything possible to bring an opportunity for healing and justice for survivors. It also sends a message to perpetrators that they will be held accountable for their crimes. 

House Bill 1907 and its companion, Senate Bill 2309, is an example of the state reform we’ve been advocating for and working with jurisdictions to pass. We believe that the first step to addressing a backlog is ascertaining the number of untested kits throughout the state. We don’t know the full extent of the backlog in Hawai‘i, but what we do know is that 1,500 kits sit untested in the Honolulu Police Department. This bill would ensure that these 1,500 kits and others throughout the state will be counted and tested by directing the Attorney General to ensure that all rape kits collected prior to July 1, 2016 are tested and entered into the DNA database. 

Another critical step to reform is making sure that a backlog doesn’t happen again. The bill mandates that law enforcement send rape kits to the crime lab for testing within 10 days of collection and that the lab analyze kits within six months of receiving them and enter the results into CODIS—the DNA database. It also directs law enforcement agencies to report annually to the Hawai‘i Attorney General about the number of untested kits in their custody.  

This legislation would be a meaningful step forward for survivors across Hawai‘i—many of whom have been re-traumatized by the experience of waiting for the investigation and prosecution of their case. Justice delayed is justice denied. 

Our deepest mahalo to Representatives Ichiyama, Belatti, Evans, Fukumoto, Chang, C. Lee, Lopresti, Luke, Mizuno, Morikawa, Thielen, DeCoite, Matsumoto and San Buenaventura, and Senators Thielen, Baker, Espero, Green, Inouye, Shimabukuro, Ihara, Kidani, Riviere and Tokuda for introducing this legislation—and to all those others that have, and will, support this important legislation. 

For future updates about this legislation, please visit endthebacklog.org/hawaii. If you would like to see what’s happening in your community, explore our interactive map.