Reunion Online

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.

Wayne County, Mich., the region where Detroit is located, has been riddled with problems for decades. But when a massive backlog of rape kits was discovered, a few mighty voices decided to work on changing the way sexual assault is viewed and how victims are treated, while also opening every single kit.

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

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.

Here in the United States, which came first: A victim-blaming rape culture, or a police force that doesn’t take sexual assault cases seriously? It’s a classic chicken-and-egg situation. There’s no right answer.

Every year, thousands of individuals take the courageous step of reporting their rape to the police.

In the quest to catch violent perps, rape kits can be a key ally – but only if they're tested.

Every year, thousands of individuals take the courageous step of reporting their rape to the police.

Every year, thousands of individuals take the courageous step of reporting their rape to the police. They overcome the terrible, misplaced social stigma of being the victim of sexual violence, they overcome the warnings sometimes uttered by the rapist to keep silent, they overcome the suggestions that these issues ought not to be spoken of, and they speak up.

Last year, a FedEx delivery truck arrived at the Detroit Police Department storage facility to pick up the first batch of untested rape kits bound, finally, for crime labs. Thus began Detroit’s massive task of processing its rape kit backlog – the more than 11,000 kits that were left behind to languish in a police warehouse, some for more than two decades.