Selects: How Rape Kits Work

26:49Yeah, 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. And 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 a question of funding. Yeah. Luckily, there is enough agitation at the bottom up. Right. That the pocketbooks have kind of loosened up over recent years.

27:26Right. It is something that hasn't been. It's been as a result of agitation and bad press rather than, you know, this is the right thing to do. Yeah, for sure. Consent is a big part of 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 OK 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.

28:06And 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 spiked 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 Rufinol. Right.

28:44Or something like that, whatever. If that, if you were in a bar and you suddenly woke up on the side of the road. Right. That's the kind of history they're taking for you for those reasons, 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. Right. 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. Yeah, absolutely. You're going to be giving blood and urine samples.

29:24This is super important to provide a DNA baseline. They will pluck hairs from your scalp. They will swab your mouth. They will use a comb to collect pubic hair. 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, were 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.

30:09But 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 relive something like this. Right, within like 24 hours, ideally 24 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 we both read where, you know, women said it was reliving it and I felt like I was being, even with a great care given, like I was being assaulted all over again.

30:53It's just so important to try and do if you can get there. If you can't, there's no blame. There's no judgment. Like that's a normal reaction. This is a lot to ask from somebody, but this is what it takes 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.

31:35Or you shouldn't be. No, you won't be. Not for the administration of the kit. Right. Which is, that's great. That's substantial. I mean, it's a$16 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 a shame, what's shameful, I should say, is that you will still be charged for any treatment of injuries. Say like you 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 antiviral 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.

32:21That'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. You know what I mean? Nobody should pay a cent. And then even worse than that, and 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 – it was possible that you would be denied future health care coverage, insurance.

33:03if you were the victim of a sexual assault or rape who went to go get treatment because they treated it as a preexisting condition. Unbelievable. A preexisting condition was rape. Can you believe that? Sadly, I can. All right, step down. They're going to take this kit. They're going to seal everything up. They're going to 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 everything that comes out of it goes right back in and it is also the storage device.

33:45Right. 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. 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.

34:27I 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 of procedure I'm ever tested for is when I see them take my blood or whatever specimen and they're riding on the little thing. Right. 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. Right. Which is not true. But I'm always just like, all right, well, it's out of my vision. So. Sure. I don't trust it. Right. I don't know what that is. It probably stems from having been switched at birth in the hospital. That's the only explanation.

35:01All right. We're going to take a break and we're going to come back and talk after this about the horrific problem of rape kit backlog and destruction right after this.

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38:00It's stuff you should know. 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. 100 % conviction rate. And they have great conviction rates. There's no more rape. So long rape. Sadly, that is not the case. 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 CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System.

38:49That's the database from the FBI of DNA profiles of bad people. And if a hit comes up, then you have a pretty good chance then of finding this person. The other thing about CODIS is this. When you submit a sample, a DNA sample of the CODIS from a crime like a sexual assault, and there's not a hit, that sample, you know, you just go, okay, sorry, CODIS, can I have my sample back? Like that sample stays there. Right. And so future detectives, 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 CODIS.

39:29That 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 2000s, 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.

40:11It was so bad, Chuck, that it became known as the backlog. Right. Like some dating back to the 90s where they just, like you said, sitting in warehouses untested. And at first, 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 3 ,000, I think. 2 ,000 kits in Akron, Ohio alone. So Detroit had—sorry, Akron, I didn't mean to put more on you than you had. I was confusing you with Phoenix. Phoenix had 3 ,000 kits.

40:49Dallas had 4 ,000. Memphis has 12 ,000. Wow. And in Detroit a few years back, somebody wandered into a police storage facility and was like, oh, there's 11 ,000 untested rape kits 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 or herself to the ER and go through this hours-long procedure and suffer a second violation, basically, is what it feels like. Yeah. in order to give the cops the evidence that they need, and the cops didn't even bother to send it to the lab.

41:38Yeah. 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 when they could be behind bars. Yeah. In Detroit, so there was 11 ,000 untested kits they found. Yeah. Let's say that each one was a different perpetrator. The recidivism, that's a bonehead word. The recidivism rate, they think, for sexual offenders of sexual assault is between 5 % and 32 % over a 15-year period. Okay. So if those kits sat there untested for 15 years, that means that an additional 550 to 3 ,520 rapes were carried out by the same people whose DNA was in those kits.

42:30Untested. Unbelievable. Yeah, so that's unacceptable, right? And as a result, Congress was like, here's$150 million 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. Still not enough. 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, one of the prosecutors there named Kim Worthy, who's another hashtag hero of this story, has been like, this number is going down.

43:09We're going through those kits. And it's systematically and methodically. That's what it takes. It takes someone or a body of people, not just throwing money at something, but 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.

43:44Yeah. Which is another problem. Yeah, there have been some federal guidelines laid down since then, specifically the SAFER Act of 2013 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 10 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 a 2011 report from the National Institute of Justice, 18 % of all unsolved rapes between 2002 and 2007 involved this kind of evidence that had never been processed.

44:37Right. 18%. Yep. And so in the cops' defense here, they're basically saying, most of them are saying, okay, so great, that was great, you guys funded the lab, we're 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, a third hashtag hero from this story is Mariska Hargitay from Law & Order SVU. Just from doing Law & 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.

45:20Yeah, well, actually, that's a larger foundation, but within that is inthebacklog.org. And here's what you can do, everyone, since it is National Awareness Month. First, put on something teal. Put on something teal on April 2nd. Go to endthebacklog.org and click on Take Action. And there are a number of things you can do, but at the bottom there is a donation button. And donate. I set up a monthly today that as far as I'm concerned, I'll donate monthly until the day I die. Sure. Which hopefully is a long time. Long, long time. Hashtag long time. Yeah, but just go to endthebacklog.org. If you don't have money to give, there are other things you can do under the Take Action banner.

45:57Right. For sure. Yeah. So, back in 2016, while everybody was talking about the backlog, worrying about the backlog, doing something about the backlog, the Fayetteville, North Carolina chief of police held a press conference and said, hey, the city attorneys told me not to do this, but I feel a moral responsibility to tell the public this. But we destroyed about 300 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.

46:44and the statute of limitations was not up in these cases. And that was huge. That was a big deal. And he committed his town, his police department, to going through all those cases, contacting the victims and seeing if they could still build a case for all of 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?

47:25And they found out that it happens a lot, actually. Yeah. 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 will say, yeah, you can destroy that rape kit. Sometimes it's a misunderstanding of what the statute of limitations is. Yes, but these kits have never been tested and never will be tested. That evidence is gone forever. And that is even worse than the backlog everyone has concluded, and I think rightfully so. Yeah, and like you mentioned earlier, just having this stuff entered into CODIS 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.

48:19Like, 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 can't be measured, you know. Right. And also, if you go through this procedure and you still don't get a hit in CODIS, but that DNA evidence is in CODIS, 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 caught the Golden State Killer, I believe, is from this backlog of rape kits being put through and that guy popped up.

49:01I think they got him for like 12 or 13 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 ruins any opportunity for a wrongfully convicted person who was convicted previously before DNA evidence was used. Yeah, I mean that's happened a lot. If you destroy this evidence, 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 50 years or the statute of limitations, whichever comes first.

49:49And then that's that. And everybody said that's really great, but we really only legally have to listen to our state's 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 for 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 we can start funding police departments around the country to like carry out the legwork on this. I just have one more thing.

50:22If 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 almost 2 ,700 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 We got a lot of money, you want some of it Austin? Maybe, but that allowed them to test almost 2 ,700 kits Another story, a Tucson man was convicted of raping seven women over a 12 year period after police received a grant to test rape kits.

51:19And it said, and it changed a mindset over which kits get tested. And then Orlando, Florida. A 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, you know, they finally cracked open that kit, tested it, and bam, this guy comes up. Wow. And they got him in Puerto Rico. Yep. Still a territory, doofus. 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 inthebacklog.org for sure even better just poke around there for a while and put on something teal 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 colorblind I think you might be too.

52:15Might be. So I'm going to call this ASMR. We've been getting a lot of follow-up on this. Oh, really? From people that get that tingly feeling and people like me that throw up in their mouth a little bit. Oh, this is funny. 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. That's the ideal situation. Crafting. Yeah. I seriously thought I was the only person who experienced ASMR. Friends I've talked to about it in the past think I'm crazy. No one around here knows anything about it.

52:50I 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. That's 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 the 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 in the office set it off. First, I thought it was strange, but I really enjoyed it. As our office started to grow, I began 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.

53:34So you don't have a problem with Bob Ross? No, no, I love it. Okay. Very soothing to me. But I don't think he's ASMR, is he? Yeah. Is he? Yeah. 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. Right. I listened to the entire collection and found the soft sound of his voice and stiff bristles on the canvas. Caused the same reaction. Helped me greatly 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.

54:11And yes, swallowing sounds can give me the tingles too. Bob Ross swallows a lot when he's painting. Gulp. And his mic is on his collar. I've never noticed that. I'm so excited, guys. What, 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 Candace Tali. Or Katali. Is uh in there? Yeah. Okay. That might be her surname. I got you. Yeah. Bearandmermaidart.com. Nice. I'm going to shout out your craft site. It's like jewelry and things. Yeah. It's not Bear and Mermaid art that I could see. I got you.

54:55It'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 some artists will paint, do Instagram Live and paint. Oh, yeah? And I don't know if you remember him or not, but Gregory Jacobson, he was the artist who came backstage at our Chicago show last time. Yeah, 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 Yumi started watching him originally, and then she got me into it.

55:30And it was just him painting. He wasn't even in the shot normally, 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. It just slows you down. It makes you swallow loudly. You never hear from a painter or an artist that's like, I'm in a hurry, I've got to go knock this painting out real quick. It's true. Let me put some lens flares on there. Or maybe, I don't know, I guess you could be under a deadline. He was under a deadline if I remember correctly.

56:03He had some huge show coming up, and I guess then he decided, well, I think I'll add this extra complication to this crazy deadline. But, yeah, it was interesting. Thanks a lot, Candice. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go to our website, stuffyoushouldknow.com, and you can send us a good old-fashioned email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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