Reunion Online

Like hundreds of thousands of other rape kits across the country containing evidence gathered from victims, that of Ms. Ybos lay untested for years on a storeroom shelf.

As of June, 1,185 previously untested kits have been tested. An additional 2,495 kits remained at forensic labs, and 5,553 remained untested.

After San Francisco resident Heather Marlowe was drugged and raped at the city’s annual Bay to Breakers race in May 2010, she trusted local police to process her rape kit–the evidence collected during a forensic exam–and update her if any leads turned up. When they didn’t call for more than a year, she began researching why.

The White House Council on Women and Girls released a report in January entitled “Rape and Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call to Action.”

Last week we stood together as Memphis made a public commitment to address and eliminate the city’s backlog of untested sexual assault kits.

Memphis has the largest known number of untested rape kits in the country. It is why the City of Memphis held a news conference Wednesday morning to announce several developments regarding the city's rape kit backlog.

A lawsuit accuses the Memphis Police Department of a history of discriminating against females.

For anyone who has worked on issues of violence against women, this should serve as a wake-up call that the work is far from done. For anyone who works on social change, it serves as a reminder that monitoring implementation of hard-won laws is critical.