SC bill would track rape kits and hold police accountable for testing, advocates say
After years of struggling under a crushing rape kit backlog, South Carolina may adopt a tracking system that would let survivors of rape and sexual assault know where their rape kit is and whether it has been processed.
That tracking system, proposed in a bill moving before the state Senate, would increase transparency in and hold accountable law enforcement agencies across the state, lawmakers who support the bill say.
“This bill will give some sense of peace to victims of sexual assault who, up to this point, have not had a good idea of where their sexual assault kit is,” the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Gilda Cobb Hunter, D-Orangeburg, told senators Wednesday.
The bill passed the state House unanimously in May 2019 and cleared its first hurdle in the Senate Wednesday after a panel of lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee met to discuss it. Advocates for the bill, including rape survivor Evelyn Mitchel, shared their stories with lawmakers.
Mitchell said 30 years after she was kidnapped and raped in Kentucky, she contacted several officials in that state about the status of her rape kit. After three months of investigating what happened to her kit, Kentucky officials contacted her to say the kit was destroyed two years after the reported assault, she said.
“The bottom just dropped out, and it did it now every time I tell the story. My god, I’d done all of this for nothing,” Mitchell said. “What is very upsetting to me and very shocking and very sad is that here we are 40 years later, and it’s still happening.”
Mitchell said many law enforcement agencies are not held accountable for destroying or not testing the kits. Many survivors have no way of knowing what happens to their kit once it is collected by police.
The bill aims to give survivors a peek behind the law enforcement curtain by allowing them to track their kit through every step of the process, from when it’s collected to when it is finally tested at one of the state’s five accredited DNA labs. The tracking program would be administered by the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides free rape kits to agencies across the state and receives requests to test about 800 kits annually.
As of December, the state police agency had more than 1,300 kits awaiting testing, according to State Law Enforcement Division data. Last year, it tested more than 400 kits, which is a typical amount for the state lab, Laboratory Director Maj. Todd Hughey told lawmakers. The State Law Enforcement Division backlog does not include untested kits at the four other labs in the state.
To better tackle the backlog, Hughey told lawmakers the state police agency would need more lab staff. State Law Enforcement Division spokesman Tommy Crosby said the completion of the agency’s new forensic lab in 2021 should also be helpful.
The proposed system shares similarities with one enacted in North Carolina in 2018. In North Carolina, survivors can enter the tracking number from their kit on a website to see its status.
In the first year since its implementation, information from more than 2,500 kits were entered into the site, according to statement from the North Carolina Attorney General. Additionally, nearly 8,300 old kits were entered into the system.
Hughey said the state police have found free software that could work with this system, but said the state would have to pay to customize it.
Jamika Nedwards, the crisis director at the Julie Valentine Center, a Greenville County nonprofit focused on helping victims of sexual violence and child abuse, testified that the potential cost of the system “is minimal, given the return on investment that is invaluable.”
“If we can track the origin of a piece of fruit from the vine to the table, we should be able to track the rape kits in South Carolina,” Nedwards said.
The bill sailed through the House and has support in the Senate. It passed out of subcommittee Wednesday with a unanimous vote of approval.
If the bill is passed by the full Senate and signed into law this year, it would be implemented by June 1, 2022.
“It is our intent to get a tracking system done this year,” said S.C. Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, and the chairman of the panel.
