The title of this diary was the title of a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee for the Constitution that was held on May 20, 2015. The subcommittee is chaired by John Cornyn, who has been a champion of this cause; Dick Durbin is ranking member. Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley and ranking member Patrick Leahy also attended. The panel was made up of Debbie Smith, a rape survivor who founded Hope Exists After Rape Trauma, or HEART, and who has been a strong advocate for this cause; Skylor Hearn, Ass't. Director of the Texas Dept. or Public Safety, responsible for implementing Texas' rape kit backlog law; Scott Berkowitz, President of the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, or RAINN, which, among other things, runs the national sexual assault hotline; Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who was instrumental in passing the Illinois Sexual Assault Evidence Submission Act, and currently chairs the Illinois sexual assault working group; and Sarah Haacke Byrd, chairman of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a group started by actor Mariska Hargitay of Law and Order SVU.
From an article by Sofia Reznick of RH Reality Check announcing the hearing:
Over a billion dollars in public funding has been allocated since 2004 to address the tremendous backlog of untested rape kits across the country. Yet we don’t know where and how these dollars were spent, or even the full extent of the backlog. While 400,000 is a commonly used figure, the fact is, estimates vary widely, and no one really knows how many rape kits are waiting to be tested.
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The Debbie Smith Act, the federal funding program enacted in 2004, was intended to eliminate this backlog. However, those funds could also be used to test samples from crimes unrelated to sexual assault, and was later expanded to include additional crimes as well as laboratory staff and supplies.
In an attempt to bring greater accountability to the Debbie Smith Act, Congress passed the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Reporting Act (SAFER) in 2013. But two years later, SAFER has yet to be implemented, and the Department of Justice claims SAFER isn’t enforceable – for reasons they decline to discuss.
Rachel Perrone of RH Reality Check saw my This Week in the War on Women diary the Saturday before the hearing, and contacted me with the story. She also put me in touch with Sofia Reznick, and we spoke after the hearing. She sent me the video below of the whole hearing. It's worth watching the whole thing. Many issues were discussed. Debbie Smith told her story. Hearn and Madigan talked about the difficulty starting to implement new laws (among the very few in the states). Most rape kits are found in storage bins in police stations, after police decide the case should not be taken further.
If you watch nothing else, watch Lisa Madigan's testimony. Among the highlights - she tells how, in a session on college sexual assault, a police officer said he was told in the Academy that 80% of sexual assault claims are false. She emphasized the need for training for law enforcement in how to deal (and presumably how not to deal) with victims who come forward, including how not to re-traumatize the victim, and to begin from a place of believing. Her testimony begins around the 1 hour mark.
The video follows. The hearing actually begins around 19 minutes.
http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/...