The new podcast highlights police quests in the rape kit backlog
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After an investigation by USA Today revealed that police across the country were not following up on DNA evidence from unsolved rape cases, the U.S. Department of Justice has released a report urging them to do so.
However, guidance does not guarantee that the issue will be resolved.
That’s because the federal grant program, designed to help state and local agencies handle untested rape kits, has not addressed the serious flaws revealed by USA Today in 2024. The agency receiving the grant will not be penalized for ignoring the Department of Justice’s recommendations.
The news organization has found that the Grant program has spent nearly $350 million since 2015, but the victim continues to collide with the same obstacles it first came forward months or years ago. Kit is reluctant to leave tests, coincidences, or rough reviews by police and prosecutors, informing people what happened to the evidence gathered from their bodies.
The new report recommends that agencies develop written policies that lay out “expectations, roles, and responsibilities” when evidence from previously untested rape kits matches the profile of the national DNA database known as Codis. These coincidences allow police to link genetic evidence of unsolved crimes to certain people, other crimes, or both. Matches can be key to solving cases, but only if police learn about them and take action.
The policy must ensure that match notifications are internet-based and become part of the case file. So, multiple people can access it, the report says. Today, some notifications are sent by US mail or emailed to a particular individual and lost or ignored if that person changes work. And the pursuit should not end there. The report assigns detectives to each case, sets a time slot for an investigation to commence, and sets up automatic email notifications to senior officials if these are not done.
The new procedure requires new procedures as coincidences from thousands of crimes known as law enforcement “hits” are still shelved, ignored or “overall missed”; the report says.
“If multiple accountability is not in place, a Codis hit can be inadvertently missed and submitted unassigned or untreated,” the report states.
There is no follow-up on thousands of DNA matches in Louisiana
The federal grant program, known as the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, has given money to 90 state and local agencies, including three Louisiana grants.
The state alone is suspected of leaving DNA after at least 2,400 crimes, including murder and sexual assault, according to an email sent by Captain Chad Guidley, the state’s director of the state’s police crime lab, to Louisiana lawmakers and others, according to an email sent by USA Today to Louisiana lawmakers and others. That number is probably high as officials from Jefferson Parish, adjacent to New Orleans, did not report the number to the Crime Institute.
The email says “lack of contact, jurisdiction delays, or investigation backlog” for reasons not to follow DNA matches around the state.
Louisiana Sen. Beth Misell said police and prosecutors need to do better.
“Evidence from the rape kit can bring about accusations against those who committed the attack, which is the first step towards what is worthy of justice survivors,” she said. “We expect that.”
Louisiana data reflects an analysis of 14 representative grant recipients from USA Today.
There are no requirements to investigate DNA matches from rape kits
Institutions receiving federal grants from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative do not need to use the rape kit, even if the perpetrator is still free of charge.
That remains the same since the news organization’s research was published a year ago. Maryland, for example, returned $600,000 to the federal government last year, according to a report by the state’s Sexual Assault Evidence Kit Policy and Funding Committee.
Additionally, grantees do not need to meet test kit benchmarks, notify victims of the results or investigate them.
Instead, the federal government has contracted with RTI International, a non-profit research organization, to provide recommendations. The Department of Justice pays groups to identify best practices across the country and train investigators. The “Training and Technical Assistance” portion of the grant program costs approximately $29 million for taxpayers.
A spokesman for RTI International refused to make the lead authors of the new guidelines available for interviews. He also did not answer any questions about what prompted them or how they were developed. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the grant program through the Department of Justice’s assistance, did not respond to a request for comment.
Victims are notified of the DNA results of the rape kit
The new guidelines also mention another issue identified in the USA Today 2024 investigation, but did not notify the victim when evidence coincided with the suspect.
Of the 42 victim notification policies obtained by USA Today, we recommend that you contact all or nearby all victims. He said at least six policies require the victim to be contacted only if the authorities believe that they can investigate or prosecute their case.
Of the 14 representative grant recipients in the news organization’s analysis, four with the highest notification rate shared test results with about 1 per 2 kits sent for the test. Others only reached one victim per 15 kits. In both Wisconsin and Orange County, California, officials reached only one person for every 43 kits sent for testing.
Police in Wichita, Kansas have attempted to reach just 17 victims from around 1,100 sexual assault kits. Officials there said that in some cases police learned the suspect’s name as a result of DNA testing but did not share it with the victim. The decision was made because authorities did not plan to pursue the incident and did not want the survivors to re-erupt.
The new federal guidance will instruct agencies to share DNA match news with survivors “in cooperation with your agency’s … protocols,” but will stop stating what those protocols should be. It adds that when notifying survivors of a match, authorities need to explain “the connection between the investigation and potential implications.” According to the report, victims should be supported throughout the process.
For Kim Bergman, who lives near Kansas City, the recommendations have not progressed well.
When she was 19, Bergman woke up half off after he died at a college party. Her friends saw her step into the room she was sleeping with and suspected that she had been raped and called by the police.
USA Today does not identify victims of sexual assault without permission. Bergman, who agreed to use her name and photograph, spoke to USA Today with an executive and told her he went to the hospital for a rape kit test.
“No one remembers following up with me on either side,” she said. “I have never gotten results from the hospital. I have never gotten information from the police.”
It was 2005. Bergman, who was abused by a gymnastics coach as a child, became an advocate for sexual assault survivors. At a press conference 20 years later, she learned that the backlog kit was being tested with funds from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, and wondered what happened to her.
Bergman called around to find out that her kit had been tested a few years after the party. No one told her because the outcome was negative.
Bergman said she still wanted to know. She believes that conversations about test results could have been an opportunity to provide resources such as counseling.
“Just because there’s no hit doesn’t mean something didn’t happen,” she said. “And when we see sexual assault, people don’t stop on one thing. So we have to do whatever we can to drive these people away or get on the registry.”
USA Today was contributed to this story by Nick Penzenstadler, Jayme Fraser and Dian Zhang.
Gina Burton is an investigative reporter for USA Today. She can be contacted at (262) 757-8640 or at gbarton@gannett.com. Follow her with x @WriterBarton Or at BlueSky @writerbarton.bsky.social.
