Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and longtime advocate for victims of rape, introduced the Justice for Rape Victims and Improving Use of DNA Evidence Act of 2010.  This bill would reduce the backlog in unanalyzed rape DNA kits and help identify and prosecute perpetrators of rape across the nation.  As experts on rape forensics have long known, and as the New York Times reported this week , DNA evidence is often critical in establishing guilt and bringing convictions in rape cases.

“Sexual crimes of violence continue to harm women in alarmingly high numbers, with studies showing fully 1/5 of American women falling victim in their lifetimes,” said Nadler.  “This is simply unconscionable, and we are not doing all we can to deal properly with this scourge.  Frustratingly, prosecutors often fail to use rape evidence collected after attacks, and fail to find and punish those who have committed the crimes.  My legislation would target these shortcomings and improve how we respond to rape and sexual assault.”

Over 200,000 people in the United States reported being the victim of a rape or sexual assault in 2008, which comes out to one person every two and one-half minutes.  Over 80 percent of these victims were women, with past studies showing that almost 20 percent of American women have experienced rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes.

Typically, victims of rape and sexual assault suffer from an endemic lack of proper respect by medical and law enforcement personnel, beginning when victims are first treated in hospital emergency rooms.  The lack of concern, the failure to be treated in a timely manner, and the absence of basic information often make women who have just been sexually assaulted or raped feel victimized all over again.  Certain personnel, Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) nurses, are trained specially to treat and obtain evidence in these cases.  Even though studies suggest that treatment by SANE nurses improves the experience for victims and the collection of evidence, making catching the perpetrators more likely, not all injured women receive such care.

Prosecutors then often fail to use evidence collected, in what is called a “rape kit,” to find and punish those who commit sexual assaults and rapes.  Rape kits are too often misplaced or ignored, with thousands simply collecting dust in some jurisdictions.  Even when a rape kit is sent to a lab to be tested, there can be long delays before its DNA evidence is examined, analyzed, and compared to other DNA profiles.  Such untested evidence represents opportunities lost to provide justice for victims and catch dangerous criminals.

The Justice for Rape Victims and Improving Use of DNA Evidence Act of 2010 would provide to states and localities an extra ten percent of federal funding under the Byrne-Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program if the jurisdiction:

• establishes a process by which each victim of sexual assault or rape has access to a SANE nurse;
• establishes a process by which each victim of sexual assault or rape can have their rape kit tested within 180 days; and,
• creates an online database showing its rape kits and the status of their testing, in order to help keep track of and make sure rape kits are tested.
  

This bill also would require the Department of Justice to analyze and produce an annual report for Congress on the state of the rape kit DNA backlog, as well as the backlog in the testing of DNA evidence more generally.