Dr. Pooley: Thank you for watching Paper to Practice, Unlocking Evidence-Based Advocacy. In this episode, we’ll be talking about the sexual assault kit backlog. While many advocates are familiar with the sexual assault kit backlog, we hope this video will summarize Michigan’s role in the national issue, as well as offer trauma-informed practices for notifying survivors about their sexual assault kits.

After experiencing sexual assault, survivors are often advised to receive a medical forensic exam, which can include the collection of a sexual assault kit to preserve forensic evidence of the crime.

These kits can then later be analyzed for DNA, which can help with prosecution and prevent future assaults.

However, police have not routinely submitted sexual assault kits for DNA testing, and large stockpiles of untested kits have been uncovered. There are currently 300,000-400,000 untested sexual assault kits in the United States. This is referred to as the sexual assault kit backlog, and it has been documented in jurisdictions across the country.

In response to this national-scale problem, federal and state initiatives have prompted cities throughout the US to test all of their older sexual assault kits and clear their backlogs. Twenty-eight states, including Michigan, have passed legislation mandating timely testing of sexual assault kits. Clearing the backlog of sexual assault kits may involve contacting survivors to inform them that their previously untested kit has now proceeded with testing.

News Footage Text: The Michigan State Police crime lab reached out to the Michigan Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention and Treatment Board for support. The Board immediately sought funding to conduct a review and research project to test 400 randomly selected kits from the stockpile. This project was staffed by a multi-disciplinary team of attorneys, law enforcement, and victim advocates, and had as one of its goals the development of recommendations for others on how to address untested kits in a trauma-informed and victim-centered way. The 400 Project was the springboard for the much larger Detroit Action Research Project which followed.

Dr. Campbell: The time period we are looking at here is from 1980 to 2009. So over that period of time the Detroit Police Department Sex Crimes Unit had two – 50% reductions in their staffing levels to work on sex crimes cases. Then we take a look at the prosecutor’s office. A lot of talk at the national level about best practices to have a designated unit to work on sexual assault cases. They certainly had the interest. They didn’t have the person power.

They were not able to form a designated sexual assault team until 2009. And that’s important because you don’t have a designated unit to be able to check back with the police. They did not have the resources for a dedicated unit to watch and to talk with and to collaborate with the other pieces in the criminal justice system to say, “What are you doing with sexual assault cases.”

Dr. Pooley: Detroit’s Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) Action Research Project was created in response to the discovery of nearly 11,000 untested sexual assault kits in 2009.

Dr. Rebecca Campbell and her colleagues at MSU followed the Wayne County Sexual Assault Kit Task Force as they grappled with how they would move forward with testing the sexual assault kits and re-opening cases.

The community task force also worked on developing victim notification protocols for those survivors whose Sexual Assault Kit DNA evidence was linked to other DNA in the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS.

Dr. Gregory: A victim notification is used to inform survivors that their sexual assault kits have been tested, whether or not the evidence from their has a matched with DNA evidence in law enforcement databases, and whether or not law enforcement and prosecution teams will move forward with further investigation and prosecution.

A victim notification protocol is a guidance each community uses to determine who will contact survivors (such as law enforcement or advocates, how survivors will be contacted (such as sending a letter in the mail, visiting the survivors at their homes, or contacting survivors over email or social media), and when they will be contacted. What had not been determined was what methods were least disruptive and most trauma-informed for survivors.

Dr. Pooley: In many places, victim advocates play a role in notifying survivors that their sexual assault kits are finally being tested and that their legal cases might be re-opened. A “victim notification” can come unexpectedly for survivors and may cause them to revisit traumatic experiences, which raises questions about how to perform victim notifications in a trauma-informed manner to minimize re-traumatizing survivors and offer appropriate support.

In 2018, Dr. Campbell, Dr. Gregory, and their research team returned to Detroit to collaborate with Avalon Healing Center to evaluate the protocol used in Detroit.

In the next video, we will discuss the recommendations that survivors and advocates made to the research team about what can be done during victim notifications and beyond to support survivors’ well-being while promoting justice.