Seventeen years after a girl told police she was kidnapped and raped, a second suspect has been charged in the alleged attack — thanks to advancement in DNA technology that ultimately produced a match, Salt Lake County prosecutors say.
A suspect was first arrested in 2018, but the latest arrest came after new DNA technology helped produce a match.
In 2022, at least 25,000 untested rape kits sat in law enforcement agencies and crime labs across the country. This figure only accounts for data reported by 30 states and Washington, DC; the total backlog number is unknown.
An abandoned Detroit warehouse that was once used by the police department to store evidence provides a perfect example of the negligence that rape kits are treated with. In 2009, the deputy chief of the special victims unit in Detroit visited the property and discovered piles of black garbage bags and emptied oil drums filled with 11,341 abandoned rape kits, some of them dating back to rapes from the 1980s—all of them untested.
That’s horrifying.
In 2022, at least 25,000 untested rape kits sat in law enforcement agencies and crime labs across the country. This figure only accounts for data reported by 30 states and Washington, DC; the total backlog number is unknown.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-rape-kits-are-awaiting-testing-in-the-us-see-the-data-by-state/
How many people have been assaulted by someone who would’ve been caught if a previous victim’s rape kit had been processed in a timely manner?
It’s absolutely sickening to think of…
This has been going on for years and years and years.