Completed Testing of 13,931 Rape Kits Signals Progress (Cleveland.com)
February 23, 2018
This article was originally published by Cleveland.com.
“The testing of nearly 14,000 formerly shelved Ohio rape kits is complete.
“The unprecedented undertaking already has changed the culture and will have a lasting impact on how police understand and investigate rape, Attorney General Mike DeWine said.
“In 2011, when DeWine first asked departments to start sending untested kits, which dated back decades, it was hotly debated whether the effort to test them was worth it.
“Nearly 300 law enforcement agencies eventually sent a total of 13,931 kits. The results, DeWine said, have shut down any argument as to the value of the undertaking:
About 65 percent of the time, a DNA profile was identified and entered into state and national crime databases.
36 percent of the time, those profiles resulted in a hit to a criminal profile or a match to another case.
Testing helped link 300 suspected serial offenders to 1,127 crimes, mostly rapes.”
“There are many lessons to be learned from this work. Among those lessons, we know that it is never too late to tell a survivor that we believe them and that they did not deserve what happened to them.” – Sondra Miller, President & CEO, Cleveland Rape Crisis Center
This article was originally published by Cleveland.com at http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2018/02/completed_testing_of_13931_rape_kits_signals_progress_unfinished_business_and_investigtions_remain.html
