‘Law & Order’ Draws Attention to Untested Rape Kits

Jennifer Love Hewitt guest stars as a repeat rape survivor on 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.'

Over the past 12 seasons, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has kept us tuning in for its sensational stories about grisly crimes. The Sept. 29 episode promises to do much more, sending an important message about an under-the-radar issue — that hundreds of thousands of rape kits sit untested in police precincts and crime labs across the country, allowing violent perpetrators to go free while their victims live in fear.

“The assumption is that rape is the crime. There’s actually a bigger crime that takes place afterward, when these women are put through rape-kit examinations,” says Jennifer Love Hewitt, who plays a traumatized survivor in the episode. Rape victims undergo invasive collection of evidence (e.g., bodily fluids and hair) for these kits, “and then nothing ever becomes of them. The women have no idea if the person has been caught or he’s out there, watching them. It’s up to them to see if their kit has been tested, even though it brings up awful memories.”

Because DNA evidence may identify and help convict a perpetrator, it’s vital for victims to report a rape to the police, submit to the exam, and then follow up on it, says Sarah Tofte, director of advocacy and strategic partnerships at the Joyful Heart Foundation, founded by SVU star Mariska Hargitay in 2004 to help sexual-assault and domestic-violence survivors heal and reclaim their lives. “We hear from victims who because their kit wasn’t tested, the perpetrator went on to rape other women,” says Tofte, who adds this frightening FBI statistic: Only 24 percent of reported rape cases result in arrest.

The backlog in testing has a lot to do with that. “It costs an average of $1,200 to test a kit,” explains Tofte. “Crime labs and police don’t often have the resources they need to keep up with the DNA requests they’re getting. Part of it is criminal justice attitudes. We still have a long way to go in terms of taking rape seriously and making sure we aren’t treating victims based on our bias. We have to make sure that rape investigation is a priority for law enforcement and that they’re doing everything they need to do to pursue the cases that are before them.”

Toward that end, on Sept. 29 the Joyful Heart Foundation will launch endthebacklog.org, a website “that will give people all the information they need to be effective advocates to change policies, both at the federal level and the state level,” Tofte says. “There’s going to be data on all the different cities that currently have backlogs and what we need Congress to do and states to do to fix the problem. And giving people advocacy tools to write to their public officials, giving survivors tools to get information about the status of their kits.”

Hargitay, who has testified before Congress, will continue making appearances about the issue, Tofte adds. “Testing a rape kit is about providing justice for the victim, preventing future crimes and making sure you’re catching a rapist and holding him accountable.”

Do you plan to watch tomorrow’s SVU episode?

Photo credit: Will Hart/NBC