Detroit Rape Kit Project
The prevalence of sexual assault in the United States is staggering. According to a study conducted by the National Victim Center one in four females and one in six males will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, sexual assault is the violent crime least often reported to law enforcement. Given that the crime is greatly under-reported, the prevalence of sexual assault is probably also grossly underestimated.
In 2009, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym L. Worthy's office discovered 11,341 sexual assault kits in a Detroit Police Department property storage facility. The kits, which were collected between 1984 and 2009, were never submitted for DNA testing. A sexual assault kit is the DNA taken from a victim's body after a sexual assault. Each one of the untested kits represents a man, woman or child who suffered a violent assault and underwent a lengthy and physically invasive evidentiary collection procedure in an effort to apprehend his or her assailant. If tested, a sexual assault kit can identify an unknown assailant, affirm a victim's version of events, discredit a suspect's story and connect evidence to serial rapists. In contrast, an untested kit can often mean justice denied for victims.
Faced with 11,341 untested sexual assault kits, Prosecutor Worthy applied for, and received, a grant from the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice. Under the grant, a group of multi-disciplinary stakeholders, along with sexual assault researchers from Michigan State University, meet regularly to determine how thousands of sexual assault kits came to be warehoused, how to move forward and how to ensure that the problem does not happen again. Prosecutor Worthy is dedicated to ensuring that: every kit is tested: every case is investigated; and that a victim-centered approach to the investigation of sexual assault is implemented at a state and national level.
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