that had audited their inventories. It discovered the largest backlog of any state in the country: 15,160 untested kits. <\/span><\/p>\nNowhere in North Carolina was the problem larger than in Durham, where police found 1,711 kits from assaults dating back as far as 1988.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\u201cIt came as a shock that Durham had so many,\u201d said Charlene Reiss, the Sexual Assault Response Team coordinator at the Durham Crisis Response Center. <\/span><\/p>\nThe State Crime Lab noted that some of those untested kits may have been resolved in court or marked as \u201cunfounded,\u201d which means that police believed a crime didn\u2019t occur. The rest of the kits \u2014 those that were never given a reason for remaining on the shelf \u2014 are marked as \u201cother\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\nNot only did Durham police find the largest backlog of untested kits, but they also harbored one of the largest portions of \u201cother\u201d kits \u2014 those that remained untested for no given reason. <\/span><\/p>\nWhy, especially in a city as progressive as Durham, did sexual assault kits pile up? <\/span><\/p>\nSome factors were outside their control, police wrote in the 2018 SAKI grant application. The State Crime Lab changed their policies about which sexual assault kits were eligible to be tested, causing confusion among officers. And some of the kits in Durham police\u2019s possession were connected to cases already resolved in court. <\/span><\/p>\nBut police also found that some investigators didn\u2019t know a sexual assault kit could be submitted. Other officers \u201coverlooked sending it,” according to the grant application. <\/span><\/p>\nThose familiar with the backlog hesitate to blame police. \u201cThere are definitely things that fell through the cracks,\u201d Reiss said. \u201cBut for many years, the State Crime Lab was so backed up that it took years to get results back.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\nThat\u2019s when the State Crime Lab asked police jurisdictions to stop sending consent cases, or cases where both parties admit that sex did occur, according to Reiss. <\/span><\/p>\n\u201cTesting that kit wouldn\u2019t help in that particular case,\u201d Reiss said. \u201cIn those situations, it doesn\u2019t come down to proving whether or not sex happened; it comes down to proving consent. So a lot of things on the shelf in Durham were consent cases, and they were told not to send those.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\nNow, as part of the effort to clear North Carolina\u2019s backlog, the lab is asking police to send all their untested kits. Durham, with the support of its SAKI grant, is beginning to do that. <\/span><\/p>\n***<\/span><\/p>\nDurham police, prosecutors, and victim advocates agree that to tackle a backlog this large, they need help. <\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOur office is already understaffed,\u201d said Kendra Montgomery-Blinn, an Assistant District Attorney. \u201cRight now, the older cases that are coming through \u2014 we\u2019re just adding them on top of our duties. It\u2019s too much.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\nEach sexual assault kit costs about $700 to test, according to the North Carolina Attorney General\u2019s office. With Durham\u2019s 1,711 kits, that puts the cost of testing the backlog at nearly $1.2 million.<\/span><\/p>\nBut that estimate doesn\u2019t include the cost of the investigative work that often happens after testing. <\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWith such a large backlog \u2026 the DPD does not have the resources to investigate these backlogged cases and also focus on current cases,\u201d the SAKI grant application says. <\/span><\/p>\nThat\u2019s why Durham police are using the grant to create a new investigative team: the Cold Case Unit. <\/span><\/p>\nThe Cold Case Unit will have two full-time investigators dedicated to reopening sexual assault cases and a bilingual witness assistant to support victims through the justice system. <\/span><\/p>\nSAKI grant money is also going to the Durham Crisis Response Center, which will fund a new advocate to assist with calling victims. The District Attorney\u2019s office will also hire a full-time prosecutor to bring cold case sexual assaults to trial. <\/span><\/p>\nDistrict Attorney Satana Deberry is ready to reprioritize sexual assault in her office. <\/span><\/p>\n\u201cPart of the reason that sexual assault is underreported is because people don\u2019t feel comfortable coming to the justice system,\u201d Deberry said. \u201cIt\u2019s important for us to signal to the community that we take these things seriously.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe spend a lot of time talking about the violence in our community, but often we don\u2019t talk about the violence against women and children,\u201d she added. <\/span><\/p>\nThe District Attorney\u2019s office is now prosecuting three cold cases in which sexual assault kits were tested after years of sitting in the backlog. With the new hires from the SAKI grant, they expect more charges to come and a new energy behind the process. <\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI think everybody in Durham was surprised when they did the inventory,\u201d Reiss said. \u201cBut things have changed.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\nDeberry agreed. \u201cNow we\u2019re cleaning up what this system may have let sit for a while.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Nov. 4, the Durham Police Department secured $1 million from the federal government to help clear the city\u2019s sexual assault kit backlog. In a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[58,77,246,254],"class_list":["post-1506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courthouse-project","tag-city-council","tag-criminal-justice-reform","tag-satana-deberry","tag-sexual-assault","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n
Durham accepts $1 million to clear sexual assault kit backlog - 9th Street Journal<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n