Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday.
Chuck here with the selects pick for the week, and this week it's a pretty heavy on everyone. This is about rape kits and the episode is how rape kits work. And this is from April second, twenty nineteen. And the reason that I chose to select is because it's just a super important topic about the funding of rape kits, the lack of funding rather for rape kits, and the backlog of processing rape kits. And it's something that should be known far and wide. So that's why I picked
it for this week's episode. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. And now whatever chipperness you might hear, my voice can decline from here on out.
Yeah.
Man, this this is another one of those that's uh tough topic. It's not gonna be loaded with jokes.
No, I can't. I couldn't. I can't think of a single one. And anytime like I started to be like, oh maybe we should come with jokes, now, it's.
Not like we do that anyway, right, Like this would be a good place for a joke. Let me get our writers.
On its joke here in brackets.
Yes obviously. Uh.
I mean if you saw the title about rape kits, hopefully that is the trigger warning you need.
But we might as well just say it out loud. M h. Trigger warning for this one. That's all we need to say, I think, right.
Pretty much. I mean we're talking about rape, sexual assault in general, and specifically. I want to say, Chuck, I've had on the list for a really long time rape as a topic at I think it definitely deserves it, but it's I've just been kind of walking past it every time I go down the list, you know, right, I think it's due, especially after this one. Yeah, but it's it's almost like we needed to do this one first, or else it wouldn't be stuff you should know, right,
if we didn't do something tangential, bigger topic. Sure, we'll do that eventually. Yeah.
And also this comes out this is one of those happenstance things. As I was researching and reading this stuff, I was like, oh, you know what we should check and see when Sexual Assault Awareness Month is?
And it turned out it's April.
And it turned out that April second, the day that this drops is Day of Action, so they encourage people to wear teal on April second, which is today.
I'm wearing Well it's a mint green, but it's awfully close to teal.
Yeah, it's weird how this is all coming together.
Like, yes, so you know, Action Day should be for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It should be like a purge, like the Merge. Yeah, that's what it should.
I haven't seen the movie, but.
I guess yeah, I haven't either, but I know the premise.
And that Sexual Assault Awareness Month is carried out by in SVRC dot org, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. And also I know that we're doing a lot of precursoring here, but there is one section here on what to do if you've been sexually assaulted. Two dudes explaining this, like just do this, Like we're not taking it that likely, you know, Like we know that it is extremely difficult to do anything much less like follow all the exact steps.
So many sexual assaults and rapes get unreported for a thousand reasons. So we're not taking this lightly. But this is our job, this is what we do, and this is an important topic, so sure, please excuse two dudes explaining a section on what to do when you're sexually assaulted.
But I think that also raises another point that I want to touch on to Chuck. Sexual assault doesn't just happen to women. Sure, it happens to men.
Yeah.
The trans community is also a big target for sexual assault, unfortunately. So while it is largely women and from what I've seen women between eighteen and thirty five, it hits all demographics and targets across the spectrum of human beings, including men. Yeah, so I wanted to say that as well.
All right, now on with the show. So should we do the history part first?
I think I was thinking, so I think we should say what a rape kit actually is.
Oh, that's something we always do wrong.
We're doing it right though we've hit everything right so far. I think I think a rape kit, and I'm so sorry everybody to keep saying rape kit. They're also called sexual assault evidence collection kits. You can understand why people call them rape kits. But from here on out, maybe we'll just try to say kit. Sure, they are really simply a box. I saw a shoebox size, Ed says, microwave oven size.
Just depends on the oven.
A big old box. Yeah, and inside this box is a all the stuff you need to collect the evidence of a sexual assault.
Yeah, that a professional uses. It's not like a home thing.
No, but it does include such thorough, step by step directions that someone who's not specifically trained to do this can can can carry out this kind of examination.
I wonder one does this, Like, can you buy these and perform this at home? Is you're too A thousand reasons why you wouldn't go into a hospital.
I think that you you can. You can buy them from medical supply or law enforcement supply places. Both of them sell kits, and they're actually relatively cheap. I saw between five fifteen twenty five bucks, So yeah, you totally could. It will still edit probably not. The defense would just shoot holes in it all day long, and the jury would be like, I'm sorry.
Which they're already looking to do.
Part of the of the process of collecting this evidence and combining it all together to create this kit is it begins a chain of custody. And if you do it at home and then bring it in and they're going to be like, come on.
Right, And there are a lot of problems with the chain of custody that we're obviously going to cover as well when you leave it to the professionals.
Right, it's just a big mess.
But it is a big mess. But it's still more often than not, it seems to be. It seems to have been a good invention, sure, and that is a thing. It is an invention, and it wasn't always around. It's actually a relatively new invention. It wasn't until I think nineteen seventy eight that the first ones actually came into official use by the I believe the police department in Chicago and then later on Illinois, which served as a
bit of a laboratory for it. And it was so successful that within another year it sorted to spread around the country.
Yeah, and just I mean it sounds like it's hard to believe, but just collecting uh and having the tools in a box and collecting the evidence and putting it in a box for storage, just that alone coming around went a long way toward helping victims be taken seriously.
Yeah, legitimizing rape and sexual assault.
Yeah, I mean, it's sad, but that's that's the case. When they were first brought out, they were called vitulo kits, in a lot of circles.
Be it t U, l l O and Louis or Lewis. I never know.
I'm thinking since season Chicago Lewis Louis.
I thought you were going to say Louis because Chicago.
I think it'd be I E. If it were in Chicago Louis.
All right, well we'll go with Lewis.
Let's just call him Chicago lou Chicago Loudulo. Now he sounds like a mobster, Yeah, Chicago Louviadula.
I think the vitula is really not helping.
No, but he was not a mobster. He was actually worked in the Chicago PDS forensic crime lab. He was a sergeant and lieutenant who did not invent the rape kit, but he was charged with sort of codifying it and putting his stamp because he was one of the first people in law enforcement that was trying to create a standardized procedure.
Yeah, he was already a very well respected forensic investigator, and so for him to say, hey, I'm a big city forensic investigator, widely respected, and this thing is the bomb. Yeah, this is a great invention. We should all start using it. And here's how it really helped spread and give it a boost early on. But even though they were called Vitulo kits, it's not to say like he was like, yeah, I invented this colin. I think he was just known in the mind of other law enforcement agents that they
associated him in these kits. So that's what everybody else called it. But really, if you want to nail down an inventor of the rape kit, it was a woman named Martha Marty Goddard.
Yeah, Goddard and Btula. I read some interviews with his grandkids, and it's like a really proud legacy. They still get letters from people from women. Goddard as she has unplugged, Like I saw one interview with her where they talked about and we're going to cover this heavily later. But the the kit backlog, she didn't even know about it because she's like no TV, no internet, no newspapers. She really just sort of checked out right, and she was like, that's really sad to hear about that.
It is very sad. So I saw a quote somewhere that I think is Betula's grandkids said that he would be spinning as grave if you knew about this backlog, which we'll get to later.
So Goddard was a survivor of sexual assault and she got together with some other victims.
Basically, the writing was.
On the wall like that, you know, things weren't being taken seriously in many police departments.
Yes, she saw firsthand that like that, that they weren't collecting evidence correctly, that they weren't they weren't taking it seriously, which is still a huge problem, and she's she decided to do something about it.
Well, the first questions, and still in a lot of areas, probably the first questions still are like, well, what was the situation, And if it starts with well I met a guy at a bar, then you're sort of discounted, like out of the gate.
Very sad and very unfair.
But she formed a group called Citizens for Victims Assistants in the nineteen seventies and went to work. Like she said, she was doing sixteen hour days visiting hospitals, talking to cops, going to police stations, lawyers, judges, basically learning and working on everyone she could about how to get a better system going. But she needed money and she got that from, of all places, the Playboy Foundation.
Yeah, Hugh Hefner's foundation, his daughter Christy was friends with Marty Goddard, and I think Playboy gave her ten which is equal to about forty two grand in today's money. Yeah, and that was enough to go start assembling these kits because one of the points from the outset of these kits was that they be inexpensive because hospital they wanted to remove as many barriers as possible for hospitals to
start implementing very smart widely. And one really easy way to do it was to say, here, these are virtually free, or in some cases, these are free because this community group raised a bunch of money to purchase the implements of these kits, put them all together, and now here you just use them, that's all.
Which is a success story in and of itself when you know how like big Farmer works in the medical community in America, Like I could have seen this being like, well, these swabs and envelopes and combs, this will be seven thousand dollars right per kit. Yeah, it's because we put it all on a box for you.
Marty godd had gotten the way of that from the outset and still to this day. I mean, that's why they're not any more than five to twenty five dollars year, even from like a medical supplier.
Yeah, amazing.
Yeah, she's a hashtag hero.
Are we doing that now? Uh huh? Hashtag in it? Yeah, relate to the game, my friend as always.
Have you heard about this hashtag thing? Sure, you got to go keep your two fingers on each hand hashtag Okay.
See, I knew you'd get a funny in there.
So they were developed before DNA evidence was even around. So this was back when it was just like hair and fiber fingernails, stuff like that.
Still very valuable.
And I think one of the kits that's sort of common these days is what's known as the Southwestern Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit.
It's like the gold standard, I guess so.
And it's called the Southwestern Obviously it was in Texas. The Attorney General's office there in nineteen ninety eight kind of created this one. And that's sort of, like you said, the one that people look to or base theirs on.
Yeah, because I mean there they took the groundwork that Marty Goddard came up with, going from to all of what you'd call in the corporate world and buzz speak, all the stakeholders in the process of apprehending and convicting people who are who sexually assault other people, you know, scumbags you can say, monsters, Yeah, monsters. And she figured out exactly how to put this together and laid the groundwork.
And then from what I understand, in the late nineties, the Texas the Texas Attorney General's office said let's let's let's purifize us. Let's let's make it even better, like using what we know. And then that's what's in use largely today. Although you're going to find different kids, there's no there's no actual centre. Its a de facto standard, right. And and in the same point, different hospitals you go to, even in the same state, are going to follow slightly
different procedures. They might use slightly different kits. But some some states have said, no, this is important enough, like here's how you do this. Here is the law of how you conduct a rape kit examination.
Yeah.
And so Goddard and Viatullo, you know, his stamp of approval, her working hard to get these things, you know, built from the ground up. The work that they did together was like really set the standard in the late seventies for this across the country, just becoming just more a more normalized way to collect evidence and take it more seriously.
Right, it was a big, big deal, big one.
Yeah, not just literally having you know, all of the implements you need to conduct this investigation, but just the very presence of these sexual assault evidence collection hits, the fact that they exist, says law enforcements, saying, Okay, yeah, this is a bigger deal than we've been treating it. Right, you want to take a break, Yeah, let's do it. We're going to take a break everybody. I don't know if you just heard, but won't be right back. It's stuffish,
all right, chuck. So the very reason that these kids exist is because sexual assault is a very unique kind of crime in that the victim, the body of the victim, is a crime scene, a walking, talking crime scene. I mean, like if you're murdered or something, and like your body is dumped somewhere, your body is still a crime scene,
but you're walking around, moving. You can actually contaminate the very crime scene from your assault just by doing things that any normal human being would want to do after being sexually assaulted. It's, in that sense, a very unique kind of kind of crime scene. And that's what sexual assault evidence collection kids are for is to step by step, methodically systematically collect that evidence and preserve it so that it can later be analyzed and using court.
Yeah, so these are the recommended steps if you've been a victim. And like I said, there are a thousand reasons that you would not want to do any and all of these things, and we totally get that. But and I think Ed puts it in a really good way in this article. He said, to receive the best possible care just medically for yourself and to have the best chances of collecting good evidence, it needs to be within a twenty four hour window ideally critical.
The twenty four is critical, and then apparently up to three days it's still viable. But after three days most experts like it's not going to get any as.
Far as DNA, which is the real, you know, really what you're looking for. You will be very upset, and you may be in literal shock, You may have had one or more panic attacks. All of these things make it very difficult to carry out like logical steps. But experts say that the first thing you want to do, obviously is get some more safe as soon as you
can get away. If your attacker is around, and try and find someone you know an advocate for you, whether it's a friend or a family member who can kind of be with you in the first you know, hours after this this horrific event has happened, go to the emergency room, even if you're not injured quote unquote physically, like you really should go to the emergency room as soon as you can.
This is a big one, not just because the emergency room is where you're going to have this kid administered, but also because it takes such tremendous reserve to draw in such tremendous reserves to take yourself out of the comfort and safety of your home, which is probably where you went to not take a shower, which is another huge step too. And to just say I'm going to go to the emergency room and undergo this procedure and let a bunch of strangers poke them probably and tell
them about what just happened. That's the ideal of what you're supposed to do. But if you look at it in that respect, that's just such a that's such a huge thing on top of what just happened, that that this is required of you to catch the person who just did it I mean from a from a bystanders perspective, it just makes you want to catch them even more. You know that that's on top of the assault as well.
Yeah, because it's not like the trauma is over for you, right and anyway it may never be. But go to the er as soon as you can if it's not right, if you if you go to sleep and wake up the next day, you can go to the emergency room then, like it's just important that you go whenever you feel like you can do so. And like you said, it's probably the least intuitive thing you could imagine to not want to shower and bathe yourself, but that that gets rid of a lot of evidence, so's it's terrible.
But they say please do not shower. Yeah, they say please.
Please the capital P.
If you you should keep the clothes you're wearing on if you can. If understandably you can't or don't want to save them, Yeah.
Put them in a bag and take them to the er with you.
Yeah, if you have the wherewithal to change clothes. And this is something that they will have you do in the hospital, have you stand over like like butcher paper or maybe even a towel. If you have the wherewithal to do that wherever you are, whether it's at home or in a hotel or someplace. Put that in there too, because when you're changing your clothes, that's when you know DNA evidence can can fall out, whether it's a hair or whatever, and in particles. Right, just collect everything you
can and put it in a bag. Certainly, do not wash those clothes, and then take those with you to.
The emergency room.
Yeah, and then the last thing you should know, just because you're going to an emergency room, and even if you are tested with this forensic kit, you're not required to file a police report.
Ever.
That's a big one, but.
Especially right away, it's not like they're going to have a cop in there grilling you. You can file this police report whenever you want to.
Yeah, If you are not comfortable filing a police report right then you can do what's called a Jane Doe or imagine a John Doe examination, where they just go through all the steps and collect all the evidence, but you never see a cop. They don't call the police until after you've left. So that's a big one for
a lot of people. Sure, the ED points out though in some states there is still a statute of limitations of between ten and twenty one years, although some states have removed the statute of limitations for a felony sexual assault. But there can be a clock ticking. But we're talking ten years at the least, right, Yeah, for sure. So yeah, you don't have to. This isn't something you have to knock out that day if you don't want to, if
you're not ready to. When you go to the er for this kind of examination, you are signing up for a few hours. It's going to take a few hours. It's not a quick procedure. And there's something else that you should know that I really hope won't discourage you, but you should go into it knowing it is a
it's an invasive procedure. They have to collect evidence from everywhere that the guy who did this to you, the person who did this to you was, And they're also going to ask you they're going to take an oral history and they're going to ask you to basically recount the worst thing that's ever happened to you within twenty four hours after it happened. And then they're going to go over all of the spots with things like swabs and tweezers and combs and things like that to collect
this evidence. And it's going to take a while, but you should expect to be treated very gently and with a tremendous amount of respect from the people who are going to administer this examination. And I would guess to a hospital there will be counselors available there to be there with you if you don't have like a friend or a family member there with.
You or anything.
Yeah, in rural areas are where they still need to do a lot of catch up work in hospitals and things like that. But if you're in any major city, there will almost one hundred percent chance that you'll have what's called a sexual assault nurse examiner on staff. This is a nurse who has received extra training on how to administer this exam. Like we said before, like any nurse can do this and do a great job. But if you have a sa AY a sane trained person
on staff, then that's who you'll be seeing. And you know, like I said, in rural areas, they're just it's just tough to staff up for things like this, so they're still doing all they can to get grant money and stuff like that to get these people trained up.
Yeah, it's just a question of extra funding. Because if you give a hospital funding that's set aside for sane nurses, you just created a new position in a hospital that wasn't there before. You've given the nursing staff there an incentive to go further their education, invest in their education so that they can have this better job in the same hospital and help people as well. So it's really just a question of funding. Yeah, that's it, you know.
I mean a lot of this stuff sadly is question of funding. Yeah.
Luckily there is enough agitation at the bottom up that, like the pocketbooks have kind of loosened up over recent years, right, it is. It is something that hasn't been it's been as the result of agitation and bad press, right right, and you know the right thing to do.
Yeah, for sure. Consent is a big part of all the entire procedure. They're going to ask you basically before everything, like, hey, I have a speculum here, we need to do a vaginal exam. Is that okay with you? And you can say no to any and all of this stuff. This is all up to you, yeah, on how you want to proceed with this.
And they're going to ask for your consent for the whole procedure first, and then step by step before each step they're going to ask for your consent as well, and they're going to explain what's coming up, like you said.
Yeah, and as far as the interview portion, this is really important stuff as far as what will eventually wind up with investigators and the questions about like were you on drugs or had you been drinking? Like this isn't to set you up for future, you know, grilling by a prosecutor necessarily, but like if you you may have been drugged or you may have had a drink, biked or something like that. Right, So all of this is like just super super important.
So they need to know. They need to say, hey, future lab tech test for roof and all or something like that. Whatever if that if you were in a bar and you suddenly woke up on the side of the road, right, if that's the kind of history they're taking for you for those reasons, not not you know, what were you doing in a bar by yourself? Yeah, yeah, that's not what this is. Again, this is not a detective asking you or performing this exam. They might not
even be aware of your case. Yet this is a trained nurse or at the very least a registered nurse who is performing this with one would expect a tremendous amount of like compassion and respectfulness.
Absolutely, you're going to be giving blood and urine samples. This is super important to provide a DNA baseline. They will pluck cares from your scalp, they will swab your mouth, they will use a comb to collect pubic care. There will be you know, we already mentioned a genital exam, whether it's vaginal or anal. They really, like you said, they just they have to go over with a sort of a fine tooth comb everywhere where the assault happened.
Yeah, so they're going to ask you awful questions like where you penetrated anally, was an object used? Did the perpetrator lick you or kiss you or anything like that? Right, And depending on these questions, they're going to investigate further. But they're they're going to follow certain steps that no matter what. But then if you say, yes, the guy licked my face on my left cheek, there's going to be a swab on your left cheek that they otherwise may not have included in the normal steps.
Yeah, and again this is like, I mean, I can't imagine having to relift something like this, And they're.
Right within like twenty four hours, ideally twenty four hours after it happened, like the worst thing that happened to you in your life. Let's talk about it here, point to where it happened. Yeah, you know, from a stranger.
Well, and there are plenty of interviews that that we both read where you know, women said it was it was reliving it and I felt like I was being even with a great caregiven, like I was being assaulted all over again. It's just so important to try and try and do if you can, if you can get there.
If you can't, there's no blame, there's no judgment, like it's that's a that's a normal reaction. This is a lot to ask from somebody, but this is what it takes to to collect the evidence and preserve it in a way that you can catch the person who did this.
Yeah, they're going to test for well, it's not required actually to test for STDs, but they will ask you about STDs, I would imagine ask if you want to be tested.
Sure.
They will offer emergency contraception as well, and you're not going to be charged for that procedure or the kit. Here's the thing go or you shouldn't be.
No, you won't be not for the not for the administration of the kits. Which is that's great, that's substantial. I mean it's a sixteen dollars kit. But this is also four or five hours of an er nurse's potentially a highly trained er nurse's time. So that's great, they're not charging you. But what's what's a shame what's shameful, I should say, is that you will still be charged for any treatment of injuries. Say like you, we were hit and you need to be treated with like stitches
or whatever. You'll get a bill for stitches. If you say, yes, I do want anti viral drugs because I'm afraid of having contracted an STD, or I do want emergency contraception, They'll say here's your prescription, and the pharmacist will charge you for that. That's not okay. As a society, we should not ask rape and sexual assault victims to pay for their own medical treatment directly coming from a rape
or a sexual assault. We should bear that burden ourselves, and then it should give us that even slighter additional incentive to go get the guy who did it right, you know what I mean? We should nobody should pay a cent. And then even worse than that, I'm sorry, I realize I'm standing on a pretty big soapbox right now,
but worse than that, Chuck. Prior to the Affordable Care Act, you could not you It was possible that you would be denied future healthcare coverage insurance if you were the victim of a sexual assault or rape who went to go get treatment because they treated it as a pre existing condition. Unbelievable, a pre existing condition was rape? Can you believe that?
Sadly, I can stepped down.
They're gonna take this kit, They're gonna seal everything up,
they're gonna store it. Everything is like, you know, all the clothing and everything and all the swabs are dried out and labeled, and then it's sealed back in that original box as part of the I guess the genius of this kit was that every thing that comes out of it goes right back in, and it is also the storage device right where it's you know, labeled, and then it's all shipped to local law enforcement and then it's stored quite possibly till the end of time, sadly yeah,
or destroyed. We'll get to both of those things.
And ideally, and under just about any procedure, every single person who takes custody of that is supposed to sign the label on the outside of the box, so there's a clear chain of custody, and it goes from the er nurse to the cops, to the prosecutors, to the lab to the prosecutors and so on. But there's supposed to be a clear chain of custody so that there's no questions about whether it was tampered with or anything.
I always that's the one thing that weirds me out about any kind of blood sample I'm ever asked to give, or any kind procedure I'm ever tested for, is when I see them take my blood or whatever specimen and they're writing on the little thing and it leaves the room.
I don't know why.
My first thought is always like, well, they're going to mix that up with somebody, which.
Is not true.
But I'm always just like, all right, well it's out of my vision, so I don't trust it.
I don't know what that is. It probably stems from having been switched at birth, in the hospital. That's the only explanation.
All Right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come back and talk after this about the horrific problem of rape kit backlog and destruction right after this. Tough. All right, So we told you the history of the kit, how it works, your ideal scenario for what you should do if you're ever a victim, and the great ending to this story would be is and then those kits go off and they all get tested and they have great conviction rates and.
H rate so long rate.
Sadly that is not the case, and this is all over the news for years now, as it should be. But well, first of all, this is what happens in the ideal scenario. They do store this, it is tested in a DNA lab and then it's checked against the CODIS the c O d I S, the Combined DNA Index system, that's the database from the FBI of DNA profiles of bad people.
And if there a hit comes up, then.
You have a pretty good chance then of finding this person.
The other thing about COTIS is this, when you submit a sample a DNA sample, the codis from a crime like a sexual assault, and there's not a hit that sample. You know, you just go okay, sorry, Cotis, can I have my sample back? Like that sample stays there, and so future detective to say they have a suspect or somebody who comes in and as a matter of routine, they run the suspect's DNA, which I think like just
a matter of course. Now, when you're charged with a crime, they swab your cheek and then run it through cotis. That DNA may be hit and all of a sudden, this thing like you got caught robbing somebody's house, but now you're up for a rape charge from two years ago because your DNA was entered through this rape kit. So even if you don't get a hit, that doesn't mean that there's not going to be a conviction. That's not like the rape kit was all for naught.
Yeah, yeah, you know, for sure. Sadly, that's not the way it always works. In the two thousands, there started to be some there were some reporters digging around, found a story and found out that there are tens of thousands of rape kits all over the country sitting in warehouses and sitting on shelves for years and years and years untested.
It was so bad, Chuck, that they became known as the backlog, right, yeah, like some dating back to the nineties where they just, like you said, sitting in warehouses untested. And at first when I think some reporters started digging this up and found out like, whoa, this is not okay, how widespread is this and started looking around and found it's like everywhere, and some towns are worse than others, Like Akron, Ohio had something like three thousand, I think.
Two thousand kits in Akron, Ohio alone.
So Detroit had. Sorry, Akrony, I didn't mean to put more on you than you had. I was confusing you with Phoenix. Phoenix had three thousand kits, Dallas had four thousand, Memphis has twelve thousand, and in Detroit a few years back, somebody wandered into a police storage facility and was like, oh, there's a seven thousand untested rape kits that have just been that we just forgot we had. Here's the problem
with that. There's a couple of problems with it. But the first one, Chuck, is that every single one of those kits represents a person who found the wherewithal to drag himself for herself to the er and go through this hour's long procedure and suffer a second violation basically is what it feels like. In order to give the cops the evidence that they need, and the cops didn't even bother to send it to the lab. That is a third violation.
Yeah.
And the other problem is that this could be like, while they're sitting in there, and this often, sadly is the case, is that these people commit more sexual assaults.
Yep, so they could be behind bars.
Yeah. In Detroit, So there was eleven thousand untested kits they found. Let's say that each one was a different and perpetrator. The recidativism, that's a bone head word. The recidativism rate they think for sexual offenders of sexual assault is between five and thirty two percent over a fifteen
year period. So if those kits sat there untested for fifteen years, that means that an additional five hundred and fifty to thirty five hundred and twenty rapes were carried out by the same people whose DNA was in those kits untested.
Unbelievable.
Yeah, So that's unacceptable, right, And as a result, Congress was like, here's one hundred and fifty million dollars to get rid of this backlog.
That should solve it.
It did. It helped a lot, right, It got the labs going and everything like that.
Right.
The problem is is it funded labs. That's what everybody said was, well, the labs are overworked, what are you going to do? So they got more technicians, they got more labs, and the backlog got worked through. In a lot of cases in Detroit in particular, the prosecutor, one of the prosecutors there named Kim Worthy, who's another hashtag hero of this story, has been like, this number is going down. We're going through those kits and it's systematically and methodically.
It's what it takes.
It takes someone or a body of people, like specific not just like throwing money at something, but like specifically following up on the ground.
Right. Okay, so the funding went toward the labs, right, But that left another half of this formula, which is a big one.
The cops. Right.
So this backlog got moved through the labs, but that doesn't mean that the cops followed up on the results, and including cases where there were hits in Codis. Later research by reporters found that like a lot of these cases in the backlog that got worked through hadn't been followed up on. Yeah, which is another problem.
Yeah, there have been some federal guidelines laid down since then, specifically the Safer Act of twenty thirteen Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Reporting. Different states have new laws in place, Like in New York State it is law now that requires kits to be sent in within ten days of collection and tested by the lab within three months, and they
set up a timeline for processing backlog kits. But it's you know, it still depends on what city you live in and what state you live in, because it still happens. It still happens a lot. It says here in twenty eleven report from the National Institute of Justice, eighteen percent of all unsolved rapes between two thousand and two and two thousand and seven involved this kind of evidence that had never been processed, right, eighteen percent, yep.
And so in the cops defense here there they're basically saying most of them are saying, Okay, so great, that was great. You guys funded the lab. We are still overworked and understaffed and.
Out of room, out of room literally to store these kits.
So here is another thing, right, So all this stuff went, all this focus went on the backlog. As a matter of fact, the third hashtag hero from this story is Mariska Hargeta from Law and Order SVU. Yeah, just from doing Law and Order SVU. Her eyes were so open to this whole backlog problem that she started a foundation called the Joyful Heart Foundation that is basically dedicated to getting rid of the rape kit backlog.
Yeah.
Well actually that's a larger foundation, but within that is in the backlog dot org. And here's what you can do everyone, since it is a national awareness month.
First, put on something teal.
Put on something Teal on April.
Second, go to end the backlog dot org and click on take action and there are a number of things you can do. But at the bottom there's a donation button, and donate. I set up a monthly today that as far as I'm concerned, I'll donate monthly till the day I die, sure, which hopefully is a long time.
Long long time hashtag long time.
Yeah, But just go to end backlog dot org.
If you don't have money to give, there are other things you can do under the take action banner.
For sure, yeah.
So back in twenty sixteen, while everybody was talking about the backlog, worrying about the backlog, doing something about the backlog, the Fayevel, North Carolina, Chief of Police held a press conference and said, Hey, the city attorneys told me not to do this, but I feel morally a moral responsibility to tell the public this. But we destroyed about three hundred untested rape kits in cases where the statute of limitations hadn't run out.
Yeah, this isn't sitting on a shelf, this isn't untested, this is we threw them away.
They were incinerated. That evidence has gone forever and it was never sent off to a lab and the statute of limitations was not up in these cases. And that was huge. That was a big, a big deal. And he committed his town as police department to going through all those cases, contacting the victims and see if they could still build a case for all them. They made
it a priority. But it opened Pandora's box around the country, and CNN got a speculum of their own and started crawling around law enforcement agencies all over the country and saying, Hey, have you guys ever done that? Have you ever destroyed rape kits? What's your policy for that? When's the last time you did it? Were any of them still within the statute of limitations and they found out that it happens a lot. Actually, like a lot police to make
room in evidence rooms, they will destroy rape kits. Some of them have official policies in place. Some of them is just a detective deciding that the case isn't going anywhere and we'll say, yeah, you can destroy that rape kit.
Sometimes it's a misunderstanding of what the statutal limitations is.
Yes, but these kits have never gone on, have have never been tested, and never will be tested. That evidence has gone forever, and that is even worse than the backlog. Everyone is concluded, and I think rightfully.
So yeah, this and like you mentioned earlier, just having this stuff entered into cotis is huge because let's say you do nab someone and it turns out that they it comes up with like six hits from sexual assaults.
Over the years, like.
I mean prison sentences aside. The value that that has for a victim to know that that person was caught and is finally going to pay for their crime is can't be measured, you know.
Right, and also like, if you go through this procedure and you still don't get a hit in CODIS, but that DNA evidence is in codis. This if this perpetrator gets caught down the line, you've contributed to a much stronger conviction against them and probably a bigger sentence because you've helped establish a pattern of criminal behavior.
Yeah.
And in fact, that's how they call the Golden State killer I believe is from this backlog of rape kits being put through. Guy popped up. I think they got him for like twelve or thirteen rapes during his serial killer career through this backlog being moved through, and that opportunity is lost if you just destroy this evidence untested. Secondly, it also gives it ruins any opportunity for a wrongfully convicted person who's convicted previously before DNA evidence was used.
Yeah, I mean that's happened a lot.
Yeah, if you destroy this evidence, it may it removes that possibility as well. So I think the Justice Department issued some guidelines that say you should hold rape kit evidence for a minimum of fifty years or the statute of Limitations, whichever comes first. And then that's that. And everybody said that's really great, but we really only legally have to listen to our states guidelines, which are all over the place.
Yeah, I wonder if any kind of like penalty and accountability would help.
Well, I think CNN, like crawling up everybody's butt is helping. Sure, Sure, I think it's kind of opened some people's eyes. And that was the same thing that brought so much attention to the backlog, so hopefully the same attention will come to this too. And yeah, we can start funding police departments around the country to like carry the carry out the legwork on.
Yes, I just have one more thing.
If you just and I imagine you could do this in any given week or day now, if you just type in rape kit and hit news on your search engine, many articles will come up like that day of cases like this. Just today there was one Austin Police Department could potentially reopen dozens of rape investigations after getting a backlog results from a backlog of twenty almost twenty seven hundred untested kits. I believe they got a grant from.
New York.
I'm not sure how that happened, but they got like a million bucks from a grant from Manhattan to Austin, Texas.
Like, we got a lot of money.
You want some of it Austin maybe, but that allowed them to test like almost twenty seven hundred kits. Another story at Tucson man was convicted of raping seven women over a twelve year period after police received a grant to test rape kits and it said in a changed mindset over which kits get tested. And then Orlando, Florida man is now in jail today. He fled the state and found him in Puerto Rico. And once again, this
was a long unsolved rape case that they know. They finally cracked up in that kit, tested it and bammed.
This guy comes up. Wow, and they got him in Puerto Rico.
Yep, still a territory, dufus. If you want to know more about rape kits, just do what Chuck said and search it on your favorite search engines news.
Okay, yeah, go to indth backlog dot org for sure.
Even better, just poke around there for a while and put on.
Something to you. Yes, And in the meantime, it's time for listener mail.
I don't think I have anything.
Teal, you can borrow the sweatshirt. Okay, it's mint, but it's awfully close.
Yeah, I'm not good with my colors. Emily thinks I'm partially color blind. I think you might be too, might be. So I'm going to call this ASMR. We've been getting a lot of follow up on this from people that get that tingly feeling and people like me that throw up in their mouth a little bit. Hey, guys, been listening for a long time. I'm always intrigued by the topics. I'm a crafter, and your show always keeps my mind moving, so my creativity can flow in the background.
Nice, I assure it.
That's the ideal situation crafting.
Yeah, I seriously thought I was the only person who experienced ASMR. The friends I've talked to about it in the past thing, I'm crazy. No one around here knows anything about it. I love the feeling I get when I can activate the sensation. The best way I describe it is like for me getting goosebumps inside my skull.
Pretty good.
That's a great one.
I wish I knew what that felt like.
Yeah, I do too.
You know, I envy that I want this sensation.
I don't have it.
The first time I found something that triggered it, I was working in a small office in the basement of a hospital. It was getting repainted, and the sound of the paint roller and the people near me and the office set it off. First, I thought it was strange, but I really enjoyed it as our office started to
grow up again. Wearing headphones on a regular basis and listened to the entire collection of Bob Ross painting, which I famously or not famously, but I go to sleep to that sometimes on Netflix.
So you're not you don't have a problem with Bob Ross.
Oh no, I love it, Okay, very soothing to me. But I don't think I mean, I don't think he's ASMR. Is he?
Yeah, yeah, he's We didn't say that in the episode.
I didn't think.
So.
Yeah, he's like a legendary ASMR trigger for some people. Legendary, all right.
I listened to the entire collection and found the soft sound of his voice in stiff bristles on the canvas caused the same reaction. Helped me lately with my anxiety and general stress in the office. Actually, I even created a playlist of people painting. I would listen to it when I was stuck in traffic as I'm writing I'm listening to your episode, and yes, swallowing sounds can give me the tingles too. Bob Ross swallows a lot when he's painting, and his mic is on his collar.
I'm exciting, guys.
What the the swallowing? Yeah, you might have to have headphones on for that. Okay, I'm so excited, guys. You have changed my life. Thanks so much. Goosebump headed. Candice h Tali or Katali.
Is uh in there?
Yeah, that's that might be her her surtin name. Yeah, bearinmermaid art dot com. Nice, I'm gonna shout out your craft site. It's like jewelry and things. It's not barn Mermaid art that I could see. It's just a whimsical name.
Gotcha.
Yeah, There's like it's something about painting like slows people down. Like when you're painting and you're talking, you're just that much calmer.
No one paints fast.
There's this dude like if like some some artists will paint, do Instagram live and paint. Yeah. And I don't know if you remember him or not, but the Gregory Jacobson. He was the artist who came backstage at our Chicago show last time. Yea yeah, okay. He did this for years or for a year he had like some show coming and he would just sit there and paint, and you started watching him originally, and then she got me into it and it was just him painting. He wasn't
even in the shot. Normally, it's just his hand painting, but he'd be talking about what he's doing and maybe answering some questions. And I never really thought about it before, but it is like super laid back. Something about painting makes you slow, just slows you down. Well, you know, you swallow loudly.
You never hear from a painter an artist. It's like, hurry, you got to go knock this painting out right.
Let me put some some players on there.
Or maybe I don't know. I guess you could be under a deadline.
And he was under a deadline farmer. He had some huge show coming up, and I guess then he decided, well, I think I'll add this extra complication to this, to this crazy deadline. But yeah, it was interesting. Thanks a lot, Candice Nay. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go to our website stuff you should Know dot com and you can send us a good old fashioned email to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
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