Reunion Online

North Carolina has the highest number of untested rape kits of any state, but a recent call from N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein for funding to test the kits might change that. 

“What we have found through communities that have taken a lot of the old untested kits off the shelves and tested them is that serial offenders have been left free to remain on the streets and commit crimes over and over again,” said Ilse Knecht, director of policy and advocacy for The Joyful Heart Foundation

Sexual assault changes a person’s view of self, especially their body, and a rape kit becomes an extended vestige of a survivor’s own body—at great personal cost.

The Joyful Heart Foundation pushes for more funding to labs and for state regulations requiring responsibility for testing kits; it fostered a massive push to get all rape kits tested, even those dating back to the 80’s.

Sarah Parsons is ready to move forward, to endure a criminal case against the man she said sexually assaulted her, to begin closing a difficult chapter.

But she is waiting on one thing. The evidence collected last year in the emergency room of a Chicago hospital, known as a rape kit, hasn’t yet been analyzed. An attorney advised waiting; the results would likely bolster the case.

Some of the most vocal proponents of the #MeToo movement and droves of other women have come to the defense of Christine Blasey Ford after President Donald Trump questioned her credibility and wondered why she didn’t report her sexual assault at the time she said it happened.

A bill requiring law enforcement agencies and laboratories to promptly analyze all newly collected rape kit evidence advanced to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk Friday.

The state Senate and Assembly unanimously approved SB 1449 authored by Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino, according to a press release provided by Leyva’s office.

Under the legislation, newly collected rape kits would have to be sent to a lab within 20 days and tested no later than 120 days after receipt in order to prevent backlogs of forensic evidence.

In late April, at the height of her successful campaign for district attorney, interim DA Summer Stephan announced she would spend $1 million to test 1,000 rape kits.

By the end of August, only 200 kits will have been tested by Bode Cellmark Forensics, a private lab in Virginia, said a spokesman for LabCorp, Bode’s corporate parent.

Through public records requests, End the Backlog estimates that more than 13,000 kits are sitting untested on the shelves of California law enforcement—but it still won’t have a complete number unless jurisdictions are mandated to have them.

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.