St. Joseph County Leads State In Untested Sexual Assault Kits
SOUTH BEND — For years, a massive backlog of sexual assault kits from Indiana’s counties has sat untested for unknown reasons — and St. Joseph County has nearly 500, which is the most in the state.
That’s according to results of a recent state police audit that some local officials and advocates find troubling, arguing that justice for rape accusers has been put on hold.
But questions about why it happened remain unanswered, with local and state officials vowing to eventually get to the bottom of the problem.
The audit, conducted at the behest of state senators, found the county has 478 kits that have inexplicably not been tested at state police labs.
Elkhart County, meanwhile, has 79 such kits, while LaPorte County has 20 and Marshall County has 10. Those figures do not include kits that the state has reasons for not testing, such as false rape reports and court rulings that found assaults didn’t happen.
The county’s results are part of a larger pattern of kits from across the state being untested.
Kits include forensic evidence of alleged rape victims, such as fingernail scrapings, clothing and swabs collected from body parts. Evidence is gathered from exams that usually last a few hours.
St. Joseph County Prosecutor Ken Cotter was attending a conference outside the area Tuesday and didn’t return a call seeking comment about how so many cases managed to go untested and why the issue wasn’t exposed sooner.
In a prepared statement, Cotter said the county’s backlog of 478 cases will be sent to a state police lab for testing. His office has assembled a team that will evaluate kits and their related cases — some dating back to the 1990s — to ensure proper testing is done.
Cotter said the backlog is “categorically unacceptable” and that “every untested kit will be tested and the original investigation reviewed. … During this process, our office will also determine why the kit was not sent to the lab, and take appropriate steps.”
Linda Baechle, president and CEO of the Young Women’s Christian Association of North Central Indiana, said that although she was disturbed by the audit’s results, she is encouraged that Cotter’s office is investigating why so many kits went untested. Typically, she noted, it’s up to local prosecutors to order kits to be tested.
“We know there’s a cost with it and might be some legitimate reasons to not test them. But for the sake of the victims, we need to get to the bottom of it and right the ship,” she said.
To test a kit typically costs $750 to $1,250.
Baechle said she previously heard St. Joseph and Elkhart counties had problems with not having enough space to store kits, but she doesn’t know if that contributed to the backlog.
She added that advancements in technology over the years have made it easier to identify rape perpetrators using kits. Although criminal defense attorneys might argue they’re outdated, she said, some kits that have gone untested for several years could still bring perpetrators to justice.
“We now have a larger sampling of DNA so that we can run these kits to hold perpetrators accountable and prevent other women from being victimized,” Baechle said.
The state has a total of 5,396 kits held in police custody, according to the audit report.
Of those kits, the report gives explanations for why 2,836 kits haven’t been tested:
● 1,669 are “no-crime or false-report kits” being held until the statute of limitations expires or prosecutors pursue false reporting cases. Among local counties, St. Joseph has 21 such kits, Elkhart has 38, Marshall has 10 and LaPorte has 67.
● 751 kits are tied to cases that have been resolved in court but are being held to allow for appeals or until the the statute of limitations expires on related crimes that suspects haven’t been charged with. St. Joseph County didn’t report how many of its kits are tied to resolved cases; Elkhart has 19 such kits, Marshall has seven and LaPorte has 51.
● 416 kits were collected from people who didn’t report crimes and can’t be tested without the survivor’s permission. St. Joseph County has 13 such kits, Elkhart has none, Marshall has one and LaPorte has six.
State officials still don’t have an explanation for why the remaining 2,650 kits weren’t tested at state police labs. They say they plan to investigate the circumstances related to each of those kits and determine if they should be tested.
A spokesman from the office of Attorney General Curtis Hill did not respond to a call seeking comment, and a call to David Powell, executive director of the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, wasn’t returned.
Indiana’s problem, meanwhile, reflects a national trend.
Nationwide, more than 175,000 sexual assault kits have never been tested, according to a program called “End the Backlog” that is part of the Joyful Heart Foundation.
Ilse Knecht, the foundation’s director of policy and advocacy, said in an email that “when law enforcement agencies account for the untested rape kits in their custody, communities can begin to take steps to test those kits, hold offenders accountable, and bring justice to sexual assault survivors whose cases have languished, often for years — or even decades.”