Sexual assault kit
Encyclopedia
A sexual assault evidence collection kit, sexual assault forensic evidence (SAFE) kit, Sexual offense evidence collection (SOEC) kit or Physical Evidence Recovery Kit (PERK) kit, is a set of items used by medical personnel for gathering and preserving physical evidence following an allegation of sexual assault
which can be used in rape investigation
. The kit was developed by Louis R. Vitullo
and was for years referred to as the Vitullo kit. It is colloquially referred to as a rape kit. The term applies also to the collected evidence for a specific case.
, semen
or body fluid, which may help identify the assailant and provide evidence supporting prosecution in a criminal trial. The process of collecting the evidence for the kit takes hours.
Although a rape kit's contents may vary by location, it may include:
As of May 2009, the federal Violence Against Women Act of 2005 went into effect, requiring state governments who wish to continue receiving federal funding to pay for "Jane Doe rape kits" or, "anonymous rape tests", which allows victims too traumatized to go to the police to undergo the procedure at hospitals, which will maintain the collected evidence in a sealed envelope identified only by a number, unless police access its contents upon the victim's decision to press charges. While the practice had been recommended by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
since at least 1999, and was already followed at some health clinics, colleges and hospitals, and in the state of Massachusetts, many jurisdictions up until then refused to pay the estimated $800 cost of the rape examination without a police report filed by the victim.
In 2011, the National Institute of Justice published a report, “The Road Ahead: Unanalyzed Evidence in Sexual Assault Cases," providing an overview of deep problems nationwide and the contributing factors to ongoing bureaucratic difficulties. These backlogs and delays may lead to a lack of justice for victims, the report notes, and “in worst-case scenarios … lead to additional victimization by serial offenders or the incarceration of people wrongly convicted of a crime.” Findings include: 1) As an indicator of how widespread this problem has become, “18 percent of unsolved alleged sexual assaults that occurred from 2002 to 2007 contained forensic evidence that was still in police custody (not submitted to a crime lab for analysis)"; 2) One major challenge is that 43% of law enforcement agencies “do not have a computerized system for tracking forensic evidence, either in their inventory or after it is sent to the crime lab"; 3) On average, 50–60% of kits test positive for biological material that does not belong to the victim; 4) Survey responses indicated that there may be some misunderstanding of the value of biological evidence. 44% of the law enforcement agencies said that one of the reasons they did not send evidence to the lab was that a suspect had not been identified. 15% said that they did not submit evidence because “analysis had not been requested by a prosecutor.”
California
According to a 2009 report by Human Rights Watch
, Los Angeles, California
has the largest known rape kit backlog in the United States, with at least 12,669 languishing in storage facilities of the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and 47 independent police departments in Los Angeles County, and "smaller, but not inconsiderable" backlogs residing at police crime labs. These backlogs consist of both kits stored in evidence storage facilities, for which DNA analysis is not requested by investigating detectives, and those submitted for testing at crime lab facilities, but which have not been tested in a timely manner. Although authorities have struggled to address the backlog problem, their attempts have reportedly been hampered by funding issues and politics. As a consequence of these backlogs, assault survivors are often not informed of the status of their rape kit or their case.
Illinois
Across Illinois, where law enforcement and prosecutors handle sex crimes differently, a police backlog of nearly 8,000 rape kits accumulated between 1995 and 2009, only 20% of which were tested. Effective September 1, 2010, The Illinois Senate
's Sexual Assault Submissions Act (Senate Bill 3269) requires law enforcement agencies to submit all evidence collected by rape kits for laboratory analysis within 180 days after the effective date of October 15, 2010, with a written notice to the State Police. Illinois was the first state to adopt such a law, setting a precedent for other states to follow. As of January 1, 2011, the Illinois House of Representatives
Bill 5976 addresses victims' confidentiality rights and the timely processing of rape kit evidence. Both bills passed the Illinois General Assembly
unanimously, and were signed by Governor Pat Quinn.
New York
In New York State, a rape kit is also known as Sexual Offense Evidence Collection (SOEC) kit. As of 1999, New York City in particular harbored nearly 17,000 untested rape kits, which were eventually eliminated with outside labs. In 2007, the city opened a $290 million forensic biology lab. According to Sarah Tofte of the Joyful Heart, an organization that provides support to survivors of sexual assault
, domestic violence and child abuse, "Most jurisdictions allow for detective discretion in whether a rape kit is tested, but in New York City, the official policy is that every kit collected from a victim who reports a crime must be tested." Joyful Heart President and founder Mariska Hargitay
, who stars as a sex crimes detective on the TV series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
, founded the organization in 2004. According to Hargitay, who trained as a rape crisis advocate to prepare for that role, "Testing rape kits puts perpetrators on notice that they won't get away with their crimes. And it sends the crucial message to survivors that they and their cases matter."
Texas
In Texas, it is considered unnecessary to administer a rape kit after 72 hours following the attack, as it is considered unlikely for useful evidence to be collected, though other types of evidence may still documented during the medical examination, such as survivor statements, and visible injuries such as bruises, lacerations or bite marks, through visual inspection, photographs and transcription .
Washington, D.C.
In Washington, D.C.
, prior to the Violence Against Women Act, which went into effect in 2009, rape kits, despite being standard issue in hospitals, have historically been difficult to obtain, according to an April 2009 report by Washington City Paper
. According to the report, rape survivors historically waited up to 12 hours in D.C. emergency rooms while the OB-GYNs present would attend to more immediate emergencies, such as births, after which the invasive exam would be performed by inexperienced residents, who made poor witnesses at trial. The Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program was established in 2000 at Howard University Hospital in order to address this concerns, after a decade of attempts by Denise Snyder, executive director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center (DCRCC), to find a major hospital willing to host the program, most of whom either cited economic concerns or declined to respond to her inquiries. After Howard adopted the program, victims encountered the problem of requiring police authorization before receiving a rape examination, which is attributed by Snyder to the desire to maintain low crime rates on the part of law enforcement agencies, which the Washington Paper depicted as unsympathetic to the plight of the rape victims profiled in their report. Detective Vincent Spriggs, of D.C.'s Sexual Assault Unit, cites instances of false or unconvincing rape accusations, and requests for rape kits by woman who wish to have pregnancy tests or the morning after pill administered, as an obstacle to more open use of the kits. In 2008, Howard University canceled the SANE program, after which it reopened under the supervision of the mayor’s office
.
, which depicts a police sex crimes unit. In the episode, detectives investigate the case of a woman, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt
, raped multiple times by the same man over the course of fifteen years, leading them to discover that the perpetrator has raped women all over the United States. The detectives attempt to contact the Special Victims Units in other cities, only to discover that most of them have never tested the majority of their collected rape kits.
Sexual assault
Sexual assault is an assault of a sexual nature on another person, or any sexual act committed without consent. Although sexual assaults most frequently are by a man on a woman, it may involve any combination of two or more men, women and children....
which can be used in rape investigation
Rape investigation
Rape investigation is the procedure to gather facts about a suspected rape, including forensic identification of a perpetrator, type of rape and other details....
. The kit was developed by Louis R. Vitullo
Louis R. Vitullo
Louis R. Vitullo was a Chicago police sergeant and later became chief microanalyst at the city's crime lab. He is best known as the first person to standardize evidence collection in cases of sexual assault, which until then was not done in a systematic fashion...
and was for years referred to as the Vitullo kit. It is colloquially referred to as a rape kit. The term applies also to the collected evidence for a specific case.
Description and use
A rape kit consists of small boxes, microscope slides and plastic bags for collecting and storing evidence such as clothing fibers, hairs, salivaSaliva
Saliva , referred to in various contexts as spit, spittle, drivel, drool, or slobber, is the watery substance produced in the mouths of humans and most other animals. Saliva is a component of oral fluid. In mammals, saliva is produced in and secreted from the three pairs of major salivary glands,...
, semen
Semen
Semen is an organic fluid, also known as seminal fluid, that may contain spermatozoa. It is secreted by the gonads and other sexual organs of male or hermaphroditic animals and can fertilize female ova...
or body fluid, which may help identify the assailant and provide evidence supporting prosecution in a criminal trial. The process of collecting the evidence for the kit takes hours.
Although a rape kit's contents may vary by location, it may include:
- Instructions
- Bags and sheets for evidence collection
- Swabs for collecting fluids from the lips, cheeks, thighs, vagina, anus, and buttocks
- Blood collection devices
- Comb used to collect hair and fiber from the victim’s body
- Clear glass slides
- Envelopes for preserving the victim’s clothes, head hair, pubic hair, and blood samples
- Nail pick for scraping debris from beneath the nails
- White sheets to catch physical evidence stripped from the body
- Documentation forms
- Labels
In the United States
In the United States, rape kit costs, availability, proper implementation of the invasive exam, and backlogs have historically presented problems for survivors of rape seeking justice.As of May 2009, the federal Violence Against Women Act of 2005 went into effect, requiring state governments who wish to continue receiving federal funding to pay for "Jane Doe rape kits" or, "anonymous rape tests", which allows victims too traumatized to go to the police to undergo the procedure at hospitals, which will maintain the collected evidence in a sealed envelope identified only by a number, unless police access its contents upon the victim's decision to press charges. While the practice had been recommended by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
since at least 1999, and was already followed at some health clinics, colleges and hospitals, and in the state of Massachusetts, many jurisdictions up until then refused to pay the estimated $800 cost of the rape examination without a police report filed by the victim.
In 2011, the National Institute of Justice published a report, “The Road Ahead: Unanalyzed Evidence in Sexual Assault Cases," providing an overview of deep problems nationwide and the contributing factors to ongoing bureaucratic difficulties. These backlogs and delays may lead to a lack of justice for victims, the report notes, and “in worst-case scenarios … lead to additional victimization by serial offenders or the incarceration of people wrongly convicted of a crime.” Findings include: 1) As an indicator of how widespread this problem has become, “18 percent of unsolved alleged sexual assaults that occurred from 2002 to 2007 contained forensic evidence that was still in police custody (not submitted to a crime lab for analysis)"; 2) One major challenge is that 43% of law enforcement agencies “do not have a computerized system for tracking forensic evidence, either in their inventory or after it is sent to the crime lab"; 3) On average, 50–60% of kits test positive for biological material that does not belong to the victim; 4) Survey responses indicated that there may be some misunderstanding of the value of biological evidence. 44% of the law enforcement agencies said that one of the reasons they did not send evidence to the lab was that a suspect had not been identified. 15% said that they did not submit evidence because “analysis had not been requested by a prosecutor.”
California
According to a 2009 report by Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
, Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
has the largest known rape kit backlog in the United States, with at least 12,669 languishing in storage facilities of the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and 47 independent police departments in Los Angeles County, and "smaller, but not inconsiderable" backlogs residing at police crime labs. These backlogs consist of both kits stored in evidence storage facilities, for which DNA analysis is not requested by investigating detectives, and those submitted for testing at crime lab facilities, but which have not been tested in a timely manner. Although authorities have struggled to address the backlog problem, their attempts have reportedly been hampered by funding issues and politics. As a consequence of these backlogs, assault survivors are often not informed of the status of their rape kit or their case.
Illinois
Across Illinois, where law enforcement and prosecutors handle sex crimes differently, a police backlog of nearly 8,000 rape kits accumulated between 1995 and 2009, only 20% of which were tested. Effective September 1, 2010, The Illinois Senate
Illinois Senate
The Illinois Senate is the upper chamber of the Illinois General Assembly, the legislative branch of the government of the state of Illinois in the United States. The body was created by the first state constitution adopted in 1818. The Illinois Senate is made up of 59 senators elected from...
's Sexual Assault Submissions Act (Senate Bill 3269) requires law enforcement agencies to submit all evidence collected by rape kits for laboratory analysis within 180 days after the effective date of October 15, 2010, with a written notice to the State Police. Illinois was the first state to adopt such a law, setting a precedent for other states to follow. As of January 1, 2011, the Illinois House of Representatives
Illinois House of Representatives
The Illinois House of Representatives is the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Illinois. The body was created by the first Illinois Constitution adopted in 1818. The state House of Representatives is made of 118 representatives elected from...
Bill 5976 addresses victims' confidentiality rights and the timely processing of rape kit evidence. Both bills passed the Illinois General Assembly
Illinois General Assembly
The Illinois General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Illinois and comprises the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois Senate. The General Assembly was created by the first state constitution adopted in 1818. Illinois has 59 legislative districts, with two...
unanimously, and were signed by Governor Pat Quinn.
New York
In New York State, a rape kit is also known as Sexual Offense Evidence Collection (SOEC) kit. As of 1999, New York City in particular harbored nearly 17,000 untested rape kits, which were eventually eliminated with outside labs. In 2007, the city opened a $290 million forensic biology lab. According to Sarah Tofte of the Joyful Heart, an organization that provides support to survivors of sexual assault
Sexual assault
Sexual assault is an assault of a sexual nature on another person, or any sexual act committed without consent. Although sexual assaults most frequently are by a man on a woman, it may involve any combination of two or more men, women and children....
, domestic violence and child abuse, "Most jurisdictions allow for detective discretion in whether a rape kit is tested, but in New York City, the official policy is that every kit collected from a victim who reports a crime must be tested." Joyful Heart President and founder Mariska Hargitay
Mariska Hargitay
Mariska Hargitay is an American actress, best known for her role as New York City sex crimes Detective Olivia Benson on the NBC television drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a role that has earned her multiple awards and nominations, including an Emmy and Golden Globe.The daughter of actress...
, who stars as a sex crimes detective on the TV series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is an American police procedural television drama series set in New York City, where it is also primarily produced...
, founded the organization in 2004. According to Hargitay, who trained as a rape crisis advocate to prepare for that role, "Testing rape kits puts perpetrators on notice that they won't get away with their crimes. And it sends the crucial message to survivors that they and their cases matter."
Texas
In Texas, it is considered unnecessary to administer a rape kit after 72 hours following the attack, as it is considered unlikely for useful evidence to be collected, though other types of evidence may still documented during the medical examination, such as survivor statements, and visible injuries such as bruises, lacerations or bite marks, through visual inspection, photographs and transcription .
Washington, D.C.
In Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, prior to the Violence Against Women Act, which went into effect in 2009, rape kits, despite being standard issue in hospitals, have historically been difficult to obtain, according to an April 2009 report by Washington City Paper
Washington City Paper
The Washington City Paper is a U.S. alternative weekly newspaper serving the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.Founded in 1981, and published for its first year under the masthead 1981, taking the City Paper name in volume 2, by Russ Smith, it shared ownership with the Chicago Reader from 1982...
. According to the report, rape survivors historically waited up to 12 hours in D.C. emergency rooms while the OB-GYNs present would attend to more immediate emergencies, such as births, after which the invasive exam would be performed by inexperienced residents, who made poor witnesses at trial. The Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program was established in 2000 at Howard University Hospital in order to address this concerns, after a decade of attempts by Denise Snyder, executive director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center (DCRCC), to find a major hospital willing to host the program, most of whom either cited economic concerns or declined to respond to her inquiries. After Howard adopted the program, victims encountered the problem of requiring police authorization before receiving a rape examination, which is attributed by Snyder to the desire to maintain low crime rates on the part of law enforcement agencies, which the Washington Paper depicted as unsympathetic to the plight of the rape victims profiled in their report. Detective Vincent Spriggs, of D.C.'s Sexual Assault Unit, cites instances of false or unconvincing rape accusations, and requests for rape kits by woman who wish to have pregnancy tests or the morning after pill administered, as an obstacle to more open use of the kits. In 2008, Howard University canceled the SANE program, after which it reopened under the supervision of the mayor’s office
Mayor of the District of Columbia
The Mayor of the District of Columbia is the head of the executive branch of the government of Washington, D.C. The Mayor has the duty to enforce city laws, and the power to either approve or veto bills passed by the Council of the District of Columbia...
.
Depictions in media
The problem of rape kit backlogs was employed as a significant plot point in "Behave", the September 29, 2010 episode of the television crime drama, Law & Order: Special Victims UnitLaw & Order: Special Victims Unit
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is an American police procedural television drama series set in New York City, where it is also primarily produced...
, which depicts a police sex crimes unit. In the episode, detectives investigate the case of a woman, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt
Jennifer Love Hewitt
Jennifer Love Hewitt is an American actress, producer, television director and former singer-songwriter. Hewitt began her acting career as a child by appearing in television commercials and the Disney Channel series Kids Incorporated...
, raped multiple times by the same man over the course of fifteen years, leading them to discover that the perpetrator has raped women all over the United States. The detectives attempt to contact the Special Victims Units in other cities, only to discover that most of them have never tested the majority of their collected rape kits.