Joyful Heart in the News

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.

Pushed by survivors whose cases have languished, many state audits of evidence lockers have revealed a staggering backlog of untested rape kits. Research from the Joyful Heart Foundation, an advocacy organization that tracks state testing of the kits, found that state audits of inventory show there are at least 155,000 untested kits, though in a dozen states it is unknown how many kits sit untested.