Wichita police commit to send rape-kit backlog of nearly 1,700 for DNA testing
The Wichita Police Department has committed to submitting all sexual assault kits to a forensic lab for testing, including a backlog of nearly 1,700 tests dating back to 2002 that were sitting in storage, Police Chief Gordon Ramsay announced Friday.
“This effort has righted a wrong,” Ramsay said at a news conference. “While our well-intended past practices were just that, we operated with good intent, we look back and we realize that it was not the best practice.”
Between 2002 and 2015, more than 1,000 rape kits went unsubmitted by Wichita police. Between 2015 and Friday, a backlog of around 600 rape kits built up.
In rape cases, a woman’s body often becomes one of the strongest pieces of evidence. Police recommend women get a test done as soon as possible after a rape, to make sure the evidence is not washed off. Rape victims are generally asked to remove their clothing and allow trained nurses to swab for DNA and take photos of their naked bodies that could show injuries, according to the study.
“For a long time survivors have been told the kit was not done or law enforcement could not file charges for a variety of reasons,” said Kathy Williams, director of the Wichita Area Sexual Assault Center, who spoke at the news conference.
“I think this is another way to say to survivors, ‘We believe you,’” Williams said.
In April, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation recommended all law enforcement agencies in the state to adopt this approach, according to a statement from Director Kirk Thompson. A U.S. Department of Justice-funded study, the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, led Kansas to become the first state in the country to voluntarily provide an inventory of all its unsubmitted kits.
In the past, law enforcement would use a “matrix” to decide what tests would be sent to a lab for testing. If it was a “he said, she said” situation, where both the woman reporting the rape and the accused man said there was sexual contact, police typically would not send the kits in for testing, Ramsay said.
“Now, we know the best practice is to test all kits, because often, nationally, other factors have been found where testing these kits, getting them in the national database, leads to other findings,” Ramsay said.
Wichita police Lt. Jason Stephens, who was also at the news conference and is in the sex crimes and domestic violence unit, said although these kits were not submitted to a lab for testing, they were evaluated by police and the District Attorney’s Office as part of criminal investigations.
Results from the tests are coming back from the lab on a rolling basis, Ramsay said, and all kits will be submitted by the end of the year.
Stephens said at least two cases have been re-opened as a result of submitting the backlog for forensic testing.
This story was originally published November 2, 2018 at 11:26 AM.