Washington is making progress on the pressing issue of providing justice and closure for victims of sexual assault, but the process remains too slow.
In 2015, the Legislature provided funding for the testing and processing of some 10,000 rape kits that had been languishing. The Washington State Patrol reports that nearly 3,000 of those old kits have been sent to labs; testing has been completed on about 250 of them, with DNA results uploaded to a federal database. Notably, DNA from 71 kits — more than one-fourth — has been connected to at least one other case in the national database.
Those results point out the need for robust attention and action. Rapists often strike in multiple locations, and leaving cases unprosecuted leaves open the prospect that a perpetrator is violating other victims.
Fortunately, Washington and other states finally are taking the issue seriously. As labs in this state slowly catch up with a backlog of cases while also processing new ones, the Legislature this year approved $1.5 million over the next three years for the State Patrol to hire more forensic scientists dedicated to processing rape kits. The office of state Attorney General Bob Ferguson also recently won a $3 million grant to help with the work.
This reflects a national trend. In Oregon, a 2016 state law established an annual audit of its rape kit backlog, and in Idaho the issue resulted in a new law in 2014.
Victims of sexual assault deserve nothing less. Recovery from the crime depends upon assurance that authorities are aggressively pursuing the case. After victims are raped and then subjected to an intrusive hospital examination, allowing kits to languish essentially amounts to another violation.
Because of that, the Washington State Patrol also is developing a website that will allow victims to track the progress of rape kits through the system. “That was the difficult part for a lot of the survivors, is that they had no idea,” WSP Captain Monica Alexander told King5 in Seattle. “The information would be collected, their kit taken, and then lots of things were happening but they didn’t know where that kit was.”
In addition, Gov. Jay Inslee last week signed a bill designed to increase the number of nurses trained in treating sexual assault victims and collecting crucial evidence. As the (Spokane) Spokesman-Review reported, “Witnesses told legislators that improperly performed rape exams can be a second assault and untrained personnel can lose evidence, making it difficult or impossible to get a conviction.” A lack of properly trained medical personnel is particularly problematic in rural areas, and the new law instructs the Office of Crime Victims Advocacy to develop ways to increase the number of trained personnel.
Each of these steps is essential to reducing and prosecuting a crime that is particularly heinous and can leave emotional scars as damaging as the physical assault. Providing assurance that assaults will be taken seriously not only will help to prosecute offenders but will embolden victims to step forward.
The most important of these involves the processing of rape kits; as national organization End the Backlog suggests, “every survivor deserves justice.” Such justice begins with attention to the issue of backlogged kits and a national database that allows law enforcement to coordinate information.
Washington has made strides in this regard, but the existence of several thousands untested kits suggests that more needs to be done.
