Police failed to test 11,303 rape kits in Detroit

[Paul E Ester]

Prosecutor leads effort to test long-abandoned rape kits, brings justice to victims

Wayne County, Mich., Prosecutor Kym Worthy has seen her share of grisly crime, but even she was shocked by a discovery in 2009 at a former police storage warehouse. There, stacks of dusty boxes were found on the shelves of the warehouse. The boxes contained thousands of untested rape kits, some decades old.

“What we were potentially looking at, at that time, was over 10,000 rape kits, representing over 10,000 cases where women had reported, whose lives and what had happened to them was sitting on a shelf and nobody cared. I was shocked, and I think I was kind of stunned -- and not too much stuns me,” Worthy told Kate Snow in an interview that aired Friday on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Worthy and her team would ultimately discover 11,303 untested kits. Rape kits are what hospitals use to collect DNA evidence from a victim in hopes that police can test it and identify a rapist. Victims have to undergo a thorough exam that can take hours. The DNA evidence is often the most important evidence used to convict in a rape case.


“To know that we had all of these potential victims sitting out there, all of them, mostly women, and nothing had been done, was just truly appalling,” Worthy said.

http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/15/15848051-prosecutor-leads-effort-to-test-long-abandoned-rape-kits-brings-justice-to-victims

•So far, 600 kits have been tested, and investigators say that they have discovered evidence of 21 serial rapists.
•One kit from 2002 revealed DNA belonging to a man who was in prison for the murder of three women. The murders had been committed during the seven years the rape kit sat on a warehouse shelf.

The police became accessories to rape, after the fact by ignoring evidence that proves guilt of a heinous crime. Money or politics?

[timdog44]

1. This is obscene.

To have this many untested kits is more than obscene, it is absolutely criminal. My wife and I are both RNs who worked in an emergency room. The trauma that these women, and sometimes men, have gone through and then to have to come to the ER for the further trauma of an exam for rape, was so difficult to see and have to be involved in. And then for this many kits to lie in a dusty warehouse with evidence to convict the offender is outrageous. The police are indeed accessories to rape. And not just the police but prosecutors and anyone in a position to have used these kits to convict are accessories.

If 600 kits can show evidence of 21 serial rapists, what will 11,303 kits show? I cannot comprehend how this could happen.

[Paul E Ester]

2. The scale of this outrage is off the charts. 10 untested kits would be a scandal, 11K?

It boggles the mind how many women were raped by these predators, while the evidence of their previous crimes was ignored.

Rape is a heinous crime. I don't get it.

[Whisp]

3. unbelievable how women are treated. And I'm sure not all of the people involved

in this crime are vile War on Women Republicans either.

[gollygee]

4. K&R

THIS is what makes feminists outraged, folks. Not who is opening doors and who isn't.

[niyad]

10. correct

[valerief]

5. Well, they're ONLY women. It's not like they're important or anything.

[Paul E Ester]

7. Not necessarily...but the majority are.

Children are probably raped at similar rates across the sexes. For adults, its a safe assumption the majority of rapes in the free world are women. However there are thousands of men raped in prison.

For a little while SF had a serial rapist attacking men, however it seems the rarer occurrence.

I would like to hear some official explanation for this crime of justice delayed and denied.

To submit to the trauma of getting swabbed, then no one does anything with the kit. Was it a second rape?

Women often have to pay for their medical services after a rape. Who paid for all that collection, the insurance companies, the victims themselves. That this story is not daily national news, with a fundraiser to clear the backlog is amazing.

If this was an evidence locker full of drug cases they would be all over it.

[valerief]

9. Good point. Not all are women. To me, this "take the money and run"

behavior by law enforcement is just one more example of the escalating oppression in this toilet called America.

And I don't expect anyone to pay for this criminal behavior. Maybe some sternly worded letters. That's how toilets work. They just flush away the problems.

[secondwind]

6. Are these folks just getting lazier? or is something else behind this..somebody should be held

accountable!

Somebody's job should be on the line.

[Paul E Ester]

8. Why is this not a national story?

21 serial rapists found and many more to come, and it's not news.

A warehouse full of rape, locked up and hidden by the state.

"I was shocked, and I think I was kind of stunned -- and not too much stuns me,” Worthy told Kate Snow "

We all should be

[niyad]

11. according to the sponsors of the SAFER act, there are as many as FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND

untested and backlogged kits around the country. FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND.

[indepat]

12. Wonder how many minor, nonviolent drug offenders have been hounded all the while 21

now-identified serial rapists were allowed to roam free through this criminal nonfeasance and dereliction of duty?

[Lordquinton]

13. In Detroit

the city which has just been handed over to, in essence, a dictator with Conservative leanings and probably no oversight. This may be the last we hear of it too.