Sexual Assault Kit Task Force: A National Model
Prosecutors discuss challenges and best practices during a breakout session at the 2014 Sexual Assault Kit Summit in Cleveland. |
Forensic scientists discuss sexual assault kit testing during a breakout session at the 2014 Sexual Assault Kit Summit in Cleveland. |
|
In 2015, when the State of Kentucky was faced with a backlog of some 3,100 untested Sexual Assault Kits, Adam Edelen, the Commonwealth’s Auditor of Public Accounts, was asked to recommend how best to proceed with testing and follow-up. His team look at how jurisdictions around the country were handling their backlogs and their report included this case study:
"Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which encompasses the City of Cleveland, has become a national model for tackling untested sexual assault kits. It has tested 3,827 kits and hopes to finish testing the remaining 1,000 untested kits in the fall of 2015, according to the Special Investigations Chief (Chief) at the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.
The impetus for reform was a gruesome case in which five women went missing after police failed to test a sexual assault kit that matched the killer’s DNA. Their bodies were eventually found at the home of a serial killer in 2009, in addition to the bodies of six other women. The Chief told auditors that after this case, it was found that police were closing many sexual assault cases when victims, who were often addicts, prostitutes or homeless, didn’t show up for police interviews. In response to the public scrutiny, the Ohio Attorney General ordered all kits from 1993-2009, test or untested, to be “fork lifted” from the police department to the Attorney General’s forensic laboratory.
To clear the backlog, the Attorney General invested $5 million to purchase equipment and hire and train 28 new forensic laboratory analysts. Since beginning the testing in 2011, 319 individuals have been indicted and 82 have been convicted. Ninety-one percent of the defendants identified, or 230 defendants, are serial rapists. Most of those defendants assaulted at least two victims, while three assaulted a dozen or more victims. The Attorney General expects that 60 percent of all the kits submitted would result in a DNA profile that should be investigated."
Mining data to improve future rape investigations and prosecutions
Besides bringing justice to long-ignored victims and taking scores of violent offenders off the streets, the work of the Cuyahoga County Sexual Assault Kit Task Force is also helping to change how law enforcement agencies and the academic community view and prosecute rape.
That’s because the Task Force has partnered with researchers from the Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education at Case Western Reserve University’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, and has given unprecedented access to information on hundreds of sexual assaults committed between 1993 and 2010.
Already the research team has discovered that serial rapists are far more common than previous research suggested—a finding that could change how sexual assaults, including so-called acquaintance rapes, are investigated. They are also learning more about how rapists operate and their victims.
“By working together, we can help change the way sexual assaults are investigated and how the system and society view sexual assaults, victims, and offenders,” said Daniel J. Flannery, the Dr. Semi J. and Ruth W. Begun Professor at the Mandel School, director of the Begun Center, and co-lead researcher of the Cuyahoga County Sexual Assault Kit Pilot Research Project.
Here are links to CWRU's research briefs:
Overview of the SAK project
Methodology
Victims
Serial vs. single-incident offenders
Cost Savings and Cost Effectiveness
What Happened with the Sexual Assaults Reports? Then Vs. Now
For media inquiries regarding the Task Force, please contact our communications department.
Back to top