Reunion Online

The Hollywood Reporter profiled Joyful Heart founder Mariska Hargitay and her record 21 seasons on NBC's Emmy-winning drama series. She reflected on bringing assault to the front page.

Parade profiled Joyful Heart founder Mariska Hargitay.

Darrell Rea is about to be sentenced for the murder he committed 36 years ago. But the rape cases that helped bring him to justice will never be charged.

More than 20 states have passed a cascade of laws in the past few years requiring mandatory testing of old or new rape kits, audits of untested evidence, or notification systems for survivors to keep track of their kits, according to the Joyful Heart Foundation, an organization that advocates for sexual assault survivors.

The News Tribune calls on the Missouri Highway Patrol to redouble its efforts to address the problem of a growing number of untested rape kits at the patrol's crime lab.

The Kansas City Star reported the number of untested rape kits with the patrol's crime lab has more than doubled since last August, when a new law requiring police to submit kits within 14 days took effect.

In attempting to clear a backlog of 6,838 untested rape kits, Wisconsin’s crime labs delayed DNA testing in around 350 active cases, a report released this week found. Since 2016, when the push to clear the backlog began, crime lab technicians have spent over 4,850 hours testing 4,160 of the kits, taking up about half of the state labs’ analyst capacity.

Wisconsin isn’t alone, explained Ilse Knecht, the director of policy and advocacy at the Joyful Heart Foundation, a survivor’s advocacy group. 

MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) - When Ilse Knecht thinks about thousands of untested sexual assault kits, she imagines thousands of people sitting on shelves.

“Each one of these boxes represents a survivor who went through that experience, did everything society asked them to do - report the crime to police, have evidence collected and participate in the criminal justice process - and we fail them,” Knecht said.

DNA evidence collected after a sexual assault is known as a rape kit. Rape kits are supposed to be tested immediately. When they aren’t—it creates a backlog. New York City was one of the first states to clear its backlog in 2003. But nationally a quarter of a million rape kits sit in storage, waiting to be tested.

Taiwana lived in Flint, Michigan, in 1996, in a home her grandparents had passed down through her family. She was in that home with six of her seven children when her rapist attacked.

Although she reported her attacker and got a rape kit, her case was not pursued for over two decades. Tens of thousands of people have had an experience like Taiwana’s. The Joyful Heart Foundation (JHF) is leading a national effort to end this pattern.

Washington state officials say they have the solution to the massive backlog in untested rape kits.

The bill that the Senate passed Thursday, combined with funding in the upcoming two-year state operating budget, will enable the State Patrol to clear the backlog by December, 2021, an aide to Gov. Jay Inslee said.

Massachusetts is moving forward with an $8 million investment to test all rape kits in police custody following the passage of last year’s criminal justice bill, which included significant measures in rape kit reform.

The passage of the state’s budget bill means that Massachusetts has now enacted all six pillars of reform recommended by the Joyful Heart Foundation.