The 14,000 untested rape kits in California are an undercount. Here’s why
Sitting on shelves in California’s crime labs, medical facilities and law enforcement agencies, nearly 14,000 sexual assault evidence exams — so-called rape kits — are collecting dust.
The number is likely an undercount.
Only 149 agencies and laboratories reported data to the state for an audit released in April by the California Department of Justice. Eighteen public crime labs process the exams in California. Though not every department handles the kits, there are more than 690 enforcement agencies in the state.
The low turnout shocked sexual assault advocates who’ve spent years advocating for more efficient testing of rape kits and relied on the audit to shed light on that need.
“The results are disappointing to say the least,” said Assemblyman David Chiu, a San Francisco Democrat and author of the law to require the audit. “When a kit remains untested, it retraumatizes the survivor.”
Chiu wrote legislation in 2018 to mandate local facilities complete internal audits and report the numbers back to the California Department of Justice by July 2019. The data had to include additional details, including whether the crime was reported and why the test had not been completed.
The budget that year included $1 million to get the job done. Chiu’s office said jurisdictions applied for about a third of that.
The numbers range from one untested kit reported by the Truckee Police Department to more than 1,600 stowed away in San Diego.
Nineteen counties, including Merced, Napa, Sutter and Yuba, failed to report their numbers.
Chiu’s office said the poor response was also more prevalent among jurisdictions that recorded 43 percent of the 15,500 rapes California documented in 2018, according to an internal data analysis.
The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Crime Lab, which processes the kits for the city’s police and county’s sheriff’s departments, did not submit numbers. Only the Elk Grove Police Department in Sacramento County returned data to the state, reporting 17 untested kits.
The county’s crime lab unintentionally failed to submit the data, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Grippi. The lab has 129 incomplete tests, with some less than 30 days old, he said.
“Since 2013, we have tested every rape kit regardless of whether law enforcement requests analysis,” Grippi said. “We currently complete the analysis of most kits within 45 days. Over the last several years, we have also been working our way through a small backlog of cases dating from 2007 to 2010.”
The audit was another disappointment added to a list of frustrations for the activists who’ve long lobbied in the Capitol for stronger rape kit requirements. Each test represents a victim’s trauma, they said, and could contain long-awaited answers to unsolved crimes.
Rape kits require an invasive exam that can take up to six hours, according to the activist organization Joyful Heart. Medical professionals collect DNA from specimen, blood samples, fingernail scrapings and swabs.
The tests can be used to assist law enforcement across the country in linking DNA to repeat offenders, said Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, which underscores California’s need to prioritize the “forensic tool” that could lead to justice for victims.
But until 2015, there was no centralized system to track the number of collected and untested kits. After the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Tracking database launched, it took another three years before facilities were required to upload information. Even then, the data was limited to kits collected after Jan. 1, 2018.
Throughout the processes required to pass these laws, law enforcement agencies and crime lab representatives campaigned against the mandates as bureaucratic commands from Sacramento.
When another law last year was introduced to require rape kits collected since January 2016 be sent to a lab within 20 days and processed within four months, opponents raised concern about the associated price tag and personnel required for the job.
The California Public Defenders Association said crime laboratories with limited resources “should not be micromanaged by the state Legislature” and that rape kits should not be prioritized over other crime analysis.
“While the testing of DNA evidence from sexual assault cases is important,” the association said, “it is not more important than DNA testing on items of evidence collected in the investigation of other types of violent crime such as homicides, kidnapping or assaults and not more important than other types of forensic testing such as firearms analysis, fingerprint comparison and trace evidence analysis.”
The Department of Justice in November 2018 and in March 2019 marketed funding opportunities, and is currently accepting applications for another $2 million up for grabs to help local agencies test incomplete kits. The deadline to apply is June 1.
Still, facilities face a slew of challenges to completing the tests, like making sure DNA from partners with whom the victim had consensual sex is excluded from the evidence.
About a third of the reported kits in California also went untested because a victim chose not to pursue prosecution, and another 2,659 stalled because the assault allegations could not be substantiated. The evidence wasn’t needed in 2,534 cases.
Agencies were unable to include a reason for the incomplete status of more than 2,300 kits.
Despite the audit results, the Legislature will once again consider a bill to expand requirements and mandate that kits collected before 2016 be sent to a crime lab and tested by 2023.
The requirement will help close a gap in California’s rape kit testing laws, said Ilse Knecht, direct of policy and advocacy for Joyful Heart.
“You will send a clear message to survivors that what happened to them matters, and to offenders that this government will do everything possible to hold them accountable,” Knecht said. “The stakes are simply too high to strive for anything less.”
This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 8:00 AM with the headline "The 14,000 untested rape kits in California are an undercount. Here’s why."