'Unacceptable': How USA TODAY's rape kit reporting sparked officials to call for change

Agencies across the country that received federal money to address neglected sexual assault kits need to do a better job of following up on test results, including supporting survivors and apprehending predators, according to U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee.

Lee is among lawmakers, victims' rights advocates and law enforcement officials who called for increased accountability after a USA TODAY investigation into the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative , a grant program operated by the Justice Department.

Since 2015, the program has doled out nearly $350 million to state and local agencies with the goal of testing old rape kits, investigating cases and bringing closure to survivors. But in an investigation published last month, USA TODAY found grant sites have left kits untested for a second time, given cases only a cursory review after testing and all but abandoned the idea of providing survivors answers about what happened to their kits.

Lee, a Democrat from California, called the results “unacceptable” and pledged to use her position on the House Appropriations Committee to increase funding so that “every kit is tested, every case thoroughly reviewed, and every survivor kept informed.”

“This is a matter of priorities – we have to send a message that we want justice for survivors,” she said in a statement. “And we have to act that way as well.”

In Austin, Texas, where USA TODAY found police botched an investigation into a suspected serial rapist, newly installed police chief Lisa Davis said she is focused on building trust with survivors.

“There is no room for mistakes to continue happening,” she said in a statement.

And in Wichita, Kansas, where police tested roughly 1,050 backlogged rape kits but attempted to tell just 17 victims of the results , the city’s police chief directed his staff to partner with local advocacy organizations to develop a new victim notification policy. Andrew Ford, the Wichita Police Department’s public information officer, said the policy will impact both future sexual assault survivors and those whose cases were part of the city’s backlog.

The backlogged kits in Wichita were tested under a grant the Kansas Bureau of Investigation received in 2015. Ford told USA TODAY there are 32 cases for which the testing identified a suspect who was unknown to the victim but the victim has not been told of the results because officials do not believe the case can be prosecuted.

“We recognize the past shortcomings and are dedicated to enhancing our efforts moving forward,” Ford said in a statement. “As a result of this process, significant changes have and will be implemented within the department.”

Many who have participated in or supported the federal program are sensitive to criticism that the effort is falling short, stressing that any progress is worthwhile. Some fear scrutiny could diminish hard-won gains on rape kit reform.

Ilse Knecht is director of policy and advocacy at the Joyful Heart Foundation, a nonprofit that in 2010 made elimination of the backlog its top priority. In a statement, she called USA TODAY’s reporting “disheartening” and said it is clear some grant sites require more accountability. But she said the program has had positive results beyond convicting rapists, including training criminal justice professionals, spurring reforms at the state and local level, and shifting society to better support survivors.

“Any survivor who has received justice and healing as a result of these grants makes the investment worth it,” Knecht said.

Officials from the Justice Department declined to comment when asked whether they have taken any action in response to USA TODAY’s reporting, such as providing grant sites additional training. Spokeswoman Katherine Brown, in a statement, said the agency “does not agree” with the newspaper’s findings.

But another office within the Justice Department seized on USA TODAY’s investigation as an opportunity to stress its own training for prosecutors who handle sexual assault cases . In an email to reporters, Maya Vizvary from the Office on Violence Against Women said USA TODAY had highlighted “the failure to prosecute allegations that may have merit.” She provided a guide the office released in May aimed at teaching prosecutors how to bring sexual assault cases and dispelling common misconceptions about victim behavior, such as the idea that if a person does not fight back, they consented to sex.

“There are going to be cases that we can’t bring,” Fara Gold, a Justice Department adviser, said while promoting the training in a recent podcast interview. “But look at the facts, look at the law, and think about what a properly instructed jury would do, not an imagined jury. These cases are provable. Bring the cases.”

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, who has been at the forefront of efforts to address the backlog since roughly 11,000 untested kits were discovered in Detroit in 2009, said it is “infuriating” that prosecutors haven’t issued more charges from backlogged cases.

“It seems that they want more evidence than they would in any other case,” she said. “They want just a perfect case.”

Worthy said entities that receive grants through the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative should face more accountability for how the money is spent. At the very least, programs that have not been successful should have to explain why, in the hopes that they and others can learn from past shortcomings.

“It really comes down to, you have to be invested in what you're doing,” she said. “You have to want to see results, and you have to be fully committed.”

'We expect better’ from local efforts on test kits

By the Justice Department's count, the program has led to 100,000 kits being tested and 1,500 convictions. But nearly half of those convictions come from two agencies – the prosecutor’s offices in Cleveland and Detroit – while others have seen meager results.

In Austin, officials faced a backlog of about 4,400 kits but have secured just one conviction.

In 2021, DNA from two of the city’s unsolved sexual assault cases matched, providing police a lead to a potential serial rapist. Officials contacted one of the victims, who they said did not want her case reopened. But they never contacted the second woman, Krystal Allison. Allison learned that her case had been linked to another reported sexual assault when a reporter contacted her this summer. An Austin sergeant told USA TODAY that authorities had “dropped the ball.”

“We have to remember that what might be ‘dropping the ball’ in a bureaucratic process for one sergeant represents the worst day of someone else’s life,” Austin City Councilmember Paige Ellis said in a statement about Allison’s case. "We as a city and a community expect better.”

Three of her colleagues on Austin’s City Council also expressed concerns about the police department’s handling of backlogged cases.

“We can do better,” council member Alison Alter said. “But we can only do better if we recognize we have a problem.”

Alter said the way Allison’s case was handled does not meet the standards she expects of the department and lauded her for sharing her experience, saying hearing from survivors “reminds us why we’re doing this.”

“They're real people on the other end whose lives have been changed by a traumatic event,” she said. “We owe them more.”

After USA TODAY’s report, members of the Austin-Travis County Sexual Assault and Response Team issued a joint statement acknowledging that it could have been “devastating news” for local survivors to learn just one case from the city’s backlog has resulted in a conviction.

Travis County District Attorney José Garza, in a statement to USA TODAY, said the team did not want their community members to lose hope. He said his office has been actively engaged in reform efforts, including meeting regularly with the police department’s sexual assault unit.

“I believe things were broken, and we are working to rebuild from the ground up − addressing not only sexual assault cases but also how our criminal justice system works,” he said.

In 2022, the city settled a lawsuit filed by a group of sexual assault survivors. In the wake of that agreement, officials launched a new coordinated effort to overhaul the city’s response to sexual assault, including hiring additional staff and creating a cold case unit.

Davis, the new police chief, said the city recently received a $500,000 grant from the federal Office on Violence Against Women for additional training. The city has also applied for an additional grant through the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative specifically for supporting investigation and prosecution of cases. That application is pending.

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson declined to answer questions about the city’s backlog but said in a statement that he expects Austin’s police department to become “a national model” after ongoing reforms are fully implemented.

'Work to be done’ in Florida, elsewhere

The mayor in Jacksonville, Florida, Donna Deegan, also declined to comment on how her city’s law enforcement officials have handled backlogged rape kits.

USA TODAY found that investigations by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office have dragged on for years, sometimes with months passing without activity, while survivors continue to wait for resolution.

When charges have been filed, the state prosecutor’s office has focused primarily on suspects who raped strangers, though sexual assaults involving known parties are far more common. The office has not filed a single case from the backlog involving intimate-partner violence, USA TODAY found.

“As a person that comes from a household filled with domestic violence, that bothers me,” Florida Rep. Angie Nixon, who represents Jacksonville, said after reading USA TODAY’s investigation.

Nixon said she was also disturbed to learn that the prosecutor’s office weighs whether a woman was drinking or using drugs when deciding whether to file charges. People can still be raped if they are intoxicated, she said, and in fact it makes them easier targets.

Nixon said she worries the office’s approach will keep people from seeking law enforcement help because they believe they won’t be taken seriously. She suggested the sheriff and prosecutor’s offices reallocate remaining grant dollars to address cases stemming from domestic violence.

“All I can say is I’m going to have a conversation with them about it to see what can be done,” she said. “Because that’s unacceptable.”

In Wisconsin, where 2,300 kits in the state’s backlog were never processed because of carve-outs in the testing protocol, Attorney General Josh Kaul told a public radio reporter last month that his predecessor decided to exclude kits where the victims had not explicitly consented to testing.

Experts recommend testing all kits from reported crimes and have stressed that victims often disengage from the legal process when they are mistreated by police.

Kaul said the state’s untested kits could still be tested with victim consent.

“We believe that ensuring that victims are in control of the process is critical and to the extent that victims want to have kits tested, at their discretion, those kits will be tested,” Kaul said.

In Kansas, Rep. John Carmichael said he had been under the impression that the state had adequately addressed its backlog after receiving a federal grant in 2015. He said learning that few cases have resulted in victims being notified and suspects being apprehended was eye-opening. Just two people have been convicted in his hometown of Wichita.

“When it comes to follow-up on matches, either investigatively or how victims are treated ...  there still is work to be done,” he said.

Mary Stolz, executive director of the Wichita Area Sexual Assault Center, has said the department’s decision to not notify some survivors in cases where suspects were newly identified through testing is a “violation of human rights” that could affect survivors’ safety. Stolz said she is relieved that police are open to making additional notifications.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “I think we should have done it a long time ago. But we’ll do it now.”

Experts and advocates want program improved, not eliminated

Stefan Turkheimer, vice president of public policy at RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, said he hopes a better understanding about how the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative has faltered will lead to improvements in the future. He added that he would like to see the program expanded to hold more offenders accountable.

“The only way that we improve these processes and systems is by figuring out what’s wrong with them and everyone working together to make it better.”

Rockne Harmon, a retired California prosecutor who specializes in DNA and whose work has helped solve numerous cold cases, first raised concerns about the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative shortly after its launch in 2015. He wrote at the time that officials were not tracking the outcome of DNA hits and the initiative did not include “adequate resources to conduct a follow up investigation and prosecution for those rapes that produce matches.”

Since then, Harmon said he has watched with frustration as officials across the country have held news conferences to celebrate testing backlogged rape kits but offered few details on what happened to the resulting DNA matches.

He said there is no question that the program has helped solve cases that otherwise would have remained unresolved.

"The real question,” he said, “is whether it should have solved more.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Unacceptable': How USA TODAY's rape kit reporting sparked officials to call for change