Every two minutes, someone is sexually assaulted in the United States, according to Endthebacklog, a program of the New York-based Joyful Heart Foundation.
Although 60 percent of rapes are never reported, when the evidence of a sexual assault is collected at a hospital or rape crisis center, it is collected in a sexual assault evidence kit or sexual assault forensic exam kit, often called a rape kit.
When a rape kit is tested, the DNA evidence contained therein may be able to identify an unknown assailant or confirm the presence of a known suspect. It also may confirm or deny the victim's statements. Or it may exonerate innocent suspects or link one suspect to a series of similar crimes, especially through DNA logged in a national database of known criminals and unsolved crimes.
However, many rape kits across the country -- the number is reported to be as high as 400,000 -- remain untested. The reasons may be myriad and valid, but the evidence from one rape kit that helps to jail one rapist outweighs those reasons.
A report by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) released last week indicated more than 9,000 rape kits across the state had gone untested. The report was produced in response to a law passed earlier in the year by the General Assembly that demanded such an accounting.
Legislators passed the law instead of approving an amendment to allocate $2 million to start clearing the backlog across the state.
The money to fund the amendment would have come from the General Assembly's $40 million reserve account, which contains money already allocated but not spent.
It's not clear why the accounting was necessary before allotting the money, but legislators nevertheless tabled the bill to allocate the money until next year.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan effort in Congress to allocate $41 million in the fiscal 2015 budget for testing rape kits passed the House in May but has become bogged down in the Senate.
The TBI, which is sent rape kits from law enforcement outlets for analysis, reported the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department had 104 untested rape kits and the Chattanooga Police Department had 99.
For Hamilton County, Sheriff Jim Hammond said the cases dated from 1996 to 2014. And while each case would have to be reviewed to see why the specific kit hadn't been tested, he said typically the kits not tested are "a result of victims recanting their stories, a refusal to prosecute, the case was found to be non-prosecutable for some reason or the kit was found to have no evidentiary value."
The cost, which municipalities often cite as the reason for backlogs in testing, is absorbed by the state, according to the sheriff's office. Various reports put the typical cost for testing a rape kit from $500 to $1,500, meaning it would cost $52,000 to $156,000 to clear all of Hamilton County's cases. Under the same scenario, it would cost $49,500 to $148,500 to clear the Chattanooga Police Department's backlogs. Using the same figures, it would cost from $4.5 million to $13.5 million to clear the state's 9,000 cases.
As anyone with the most limited viewing habits of crime reality or crime drama television shows knows, though, DNA samples from hundreds of non-rape crimes are also tested by crime labs annually. So labs are constantly busy.
Personnel is also cited as a factor in the backlog. Strapped law enforcement agencies may not have the employees to package, ship or transport the kits to crime labs or the technology to track them.
Also critical is how agencies decide to handle the cases themselves. According to Endthebacklog, many jurisdictions only test rape kits where the assailant is unknown, others don't test the kits if the victim isn't willing to testify (out of fear, shame or exposure) and some put sexual assaults behind other crimes in the amount of time and resources devoted to them.
What law enforcement personnel know for sure, though, is that testing rape kits offers results.
As Detroit worked back through some 11,000 untested rape kits in the last several years, officials identified 127 serial rapists in the first 2,000 kits they tested and made 473 matches in all to known convicts, arrestees or unknown people whose DNA was found elsewhere at the crime scene.
In Ohio, it was announced last week, more than 200 suspects had been charged after more than 4,000 cold case rape kits were tested in the last two years.
By the time the Tennessee General Assembly is back in session, it will have been nine months since the state Senate tabled the bill to allocate money for the rape kit analysis. When major crimes are committed, law enforcement agencies swoop in and do their best to clear the scene as soon as legitimately possible. When a sexual assault is committed, the victim's body is part of the crime scene. Testing rape kits is a part of clearing that crime scene. The victims deserve that much.