Missouri making progress on ‘appalling’ backlog of rape kits

Testing status of SAFE kits stored at law enforcement agencies and healthcare providers throughout Missouri. Source: Missouri Attorney General's Office
Testing status of SAFE kits stored at law enforcement agencies and healthcare providers throughout Missouri. Source: Missouri Attorney General's Office

Missouri's backlog of untested rape kits has been cleared from 82 percent of law enforcement agencies, according to a recent report from Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.

The statewide effort to identify and process kits has tested 3,478 so far, which is 70 percent of the untested, reported kits identified in two statewide reviews, the latest of which was released in August.

"While we have made great strides in working to obtain justice for victims and clear the backlog, there is still work to be done," Schmitt wrote in a letter at the beginning of the 2022 report. "My Office will not rest until that backlog is cleared, the courage of those victims is vindicated in full, and offenders are brought out of the shadows of darkness and off of the streets."

Schmitt, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, released the updated SAFE Kit Initiative inventory report Aug. 15. It details how many kits have been stored in law enforcement agencies, hospitals and other organizations involved with processing them.

The last time the Attorney General's Office released an inventory report was in 2019, after it received a three-year grant from the federal government to catalog and begin testing kits. It needed to complete the second inventory to draw down additional federal funds for testing.

The Attorney General's SAFE Kit Initiative is part of the national Sexual Assault Kit Initiative funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) at the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).

Missouri applied for funding after an unofficial survey administered by the Attorney General's Office in 2017 identified 4,889 untested rape kits spread across law enforcement agencies and health care providers. The survey was completed by 266 law enforcement agencies, five crime labs and 66 healthcare providers.

The 2019 inventory report found 7,019 SAFE Kits, with 5,670 held at law enforcement agencies, 1,089 held at health care providers and 260 held at ancillary organizations.

The 2022 inventory report, which examined the number of untested kits from 2018-20 and partially tested kits from 1998 to present, found another 1,536 untested kits and several thousand partially or previously tested kits.

There were 40 untested, reported kits in Cole County across 11 law enforcement agencies and two medical centers, according to the latest report. There were 278 previously or partially tested kits identified in the county.

Angela Hirsch, executive director of the Rape & Abuse Crisis Service (RACS) in Jefferson City, said the progress made on clearing the backlog is good, but it should never have piled up like it did in the first place.

"I think that's appalling," she said of the 40 untested kits recorded in Cole County. "Why would we put a survivor through that process only to have it sit there for, what's it been now, two to four years? I mean, why?"

Local data

The 2019 inventory report recorded 151 untested SAFE kits stored across law enforcement agencies, health care providers and the Missouri Department of Corrections in Cole County. The kits contained evidence collected before April 30, 2018.

Of the 151 kits, 146 were reported, meaning they were associated with a police report and the survivor had initiated a criminal investigation. Five are unreported and not associated with a police report.

"It is a national best practice to not test unreported SAFE kits in keeping with victims' wishes," the report states.

Of the reported, untested kits, 68 came from the Missouri Department of Corrections, 55 came from the Jefferson City Police Department, 19 came from the Cole County Sheriff's Office and four came from the Lincoln University Police Department. SSM Health St. Mary's Hospital had two and Capital Regional Medical Center had one.

The 2022 inventory report picks up where the initial one stopped, documenting the number of untested kits from April 30, 2018, to April 16, 2020. It also reports the number of partially or previously tested kits from 1998 to present.

The second report found another 40 untested kits in Cole County, all associated with police reports indicating the survivor initiated the criminal justice process.

Of the 40 kits, 24 came from the Missouri Department of Corrections, 10 came from the Jefferson City Police Department, three from the Cole County Sheriff's Office and two from the Lincoln University Police Department. St. Mary's Hospital had one.

The inventory report also recorded 278 partially or previously tested kits dating back to 1998.

The Department of Corrections had 164 stored in Cole County, the Highway Patrol had 157, Jefferson City Police Department had 51, the Sheriff's Office had 46, Missouri Department of Social Services had 11 and Lincoln Police Department had six.

Karen Pojmann, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said institutional investigators store SAFE kits until an investigator with the department's Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Unit collects them from prisons.

PREA investigators have two weeks to pick up a kit from an institution, she said, and then another two weeks to ship it to a lab with a scheduled appointment.

"Previously, we were not sending SAFE kits to the lab if we were able to unfound the allegation relatively quickly," Pojmann said of the 24 untested, reported kits in Cole County from 2018-2020. "We have now changed that process, and we are sending all kits to the lab within the timeframe."

The Jefferson City Police Department and Cole County Sheriff John Wheeler did not respond to interview requests.

SAFE Kit processing

Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence (SAFE) Kits are distributed by the Missouri Highway Patrol Lab and contain equipment to collect DNA samples, a bag to collect the victim's underwear, a report for the lab's use and a set of instructions.

RACS works with the survivor as they navigate the rape kit examination process to ensure they understand what the doctors are doing and to offer help as needed, Hirsch said. Staff also walk survivors through the criminal justice process if they decide to file a police report.

Hirsch, who has been involved with sexual assault survivor advocacy since 1993, said the process of collecting the evidence, which is usually done by a medical provider, can often be degrading.

"It is invasive. It is embarrassing. I mean, it's a horrible experience," she said. "And why would we put somebody who's just been victimized through that, only to turn around and sit on the shelf for 20 years?"

Once the evidence is collected, the survivor can choose to file a police report and initiate a criminal investigation. It's up to the local law enforcement agency to retrieve the kit from the collecting agency, according to the Attorney General's Office.

Law enforcement agencies have no legal obligation to collect kits if the survivor doesn't file a police report, according to the Attorney General's Office. Unreported kits previously stayed at the collecting agency until the Missouri General Assembly allowed them to be sent to the state's Central Repository in 2020. They can stay there for up to five years, or five years after the victim's 18th birthday.

If there is a criminal investigation initiated, law enforcement is supposed to submit the kit to a forensic lab to be tested. Most law enforcement use the Highway Patrol Crime Lab, which has been sending the backlog of kits to a private lab to work through them more quickly.

So far this year, the Highway Patrol Lab has received 1,768 kits that were awaiting testing as of Sept. 1, according to its website, with 1,000 of those going to a private lab to be tested. The Highway Patrol Lab has tested 1,010 kits so far this year, averaging about 125 per month.

Kits are usually returned to the local law enforcement agency after analyzing and can stay there for up to 30 years or until the case is adjudicated, or they get a judicial order of destruction.

As of July 15, the Jefferson City Police Department had two kits that still needed to be tested, according to a review included in the 2022 inventory report. It was the only Cole County agency to still have untested kits.

With the completion of a second inventory, the Attorney General's Office gained access to more federal funding that can be used to ship more kits for testing.

Results

Schmitt credits the SAFE Kit Initiative with at least one conviction so far. A man was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to a 2010 sexual assault case. The case, decided in May, was brought to court this year by evidence uncovered while working through the backlog of kits.

But testing results have been mostly ineligible for upload to CODIS, the FBI's DNA profile database of criminal offenders.

Of the kits that have been tested so far, 38 percent have produced a strong enough DNA profile to be uploaded into the database, 27 percent have been ineligible and 35 percent of the kits didn't have any DNA evidence found, according to the 2022 inventory report.

Uploaded DNA profiles have produced a total of 254 hits in the system, which means they match the DNA profile of an offender already in the system. Only five came from the 2018-20 kits.

Hirsch said she's concerned that testing cases from two decades ago could damage the progress survivors make in trying to move on from the incident.

"My concern is that if they are contacting these survivors to say, 'Hey, we got your rape kit done,' that's going to retraumatize that survivor," she said. "So what are they doing to make sure that survivors are not retraumatized, if they are reaching out to them?"

Hirsch said she hopes the initiative has established a system to ensure testing happens immediately after kits are collected. She said local law enforcement agencies should be getting the results from labs within 90 days of the kit being collected.

And tested kits should be held for as long as the investigation and statute of limitations for sex crimes allows, Hirsch said.

"I would think that we as a state are sophisticated enough and have the mechanisms that are needed to get this done efficiently, quickly and accurately," she said. "And if we don't, that needs to be looked into."

  photo  A graph from the Missouri Attorney General's Office shows the relative year of assault for approximately 88 percent of rape kits identified through two inventory reports.
 
 
  photo  Distribution of kits between law enforcement agencies and health care providers. Source: Missouri Attorney General's Office