Testing ends backlog of 10,000 rape kits. What NC is doing to keep them from piling up.

The backlog of sexual assault kits in North Carolina has been cleared, Attorney General Josh Stein announced Tuesday in front of more than 100 people gathered at the Wake Tech Public Safety Education Campus to celebrate the news.

The kits contain evidence collected as part of sexual assault investigations. As of April 2024, 11,841 kits have been tested or are in the process of being tested, according to information shared by Stein’s communications team.

From those kits, 5,075 samples have been entered in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) system, a computer database with DNA profiles from convicted offenders. CODIS has matched the samples to 2,702 hits in the database, and police have made 114 arrests based on these hits. There are 17 kits in the process of testing.

“My office, including the State Crime Lab, created a plan to attack the backlog and test these old kits,” Stein, gathered with lawmakers, officers and others, told reporters. “We led a bipartisan effort with legislators, local law enforcement officers, district attorneys and advocates to get the job done. It has not been an easy or straightforward process.”

Without survivors of sexual assault, and “their bravery in coming forward and reporting their assault,” the “process to deliver justice using this evidence” could not have been done, Stein said.

Stein said that during the upcoming legislative session, which begins in late April, his team at the N.C. Department of Justice would talk to lawmakers about additional resources for law enforcement to pursue cold cases, “because we know as law enforcement does this work, they will solve more cold cases, more dangerous people will be arrested, more will be convicted and more will be put in prison.”

One woman who spoke at the event described herself as a survivor of a sexual assault, and did not disclose her full name but asked to be referenced as Ms. Linda. She thanked staff at the State Crime Lab for their work and said rape kits “give the victim a voice. A voice that empowers victims to learn how to heal from the inside to the outside.”

“Do not give in to a lifetime of fear,” she said.

After the event, she told reporters that her three assailants had been caught, with one in prison now while the other two had died.

Years of work on sexual assault kit backlog

Stein is the Democratic nominee for governor in the November election. The GOP candidate for governor is Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. Despite party differences, speakers at the event touted efforts to clear the backlog as bipartisan.

In 2017, the General Assembly mandated that the Department of Justice conduct a statewide inventory. The DOJ determined in 2019 there were more than 16,000 untested kits across the state at law enforcement agencies, one of the highest backlogs in the nation.

Stein recommended to the Republican-controlled legislature that it create a committee to determine how to handle these kits and to prevent a backlog from occurring again. He also called on lawmakers to approve a tracking system that would allow the victim, the police officer or the prosecutor to check the status of the kit, its location and whether it had been tested, as previously reported by The News & Observer.

That same year, the General Assembly passed the Survivor Act, which was sponsored by a coalition of bipartisan lawmakers. This law provided $6 million to process the old kits. It required law enforcement agencies to submit kits to the DOJ’s State Crime Lab within 45 days. Lawmakers later provided an additional $9 million to finish testing. The U.S. Department of Justice had earlier granted $2 million to jump-start testing efforts.

Under the process set out in the Survivor Act, it was determined that 11,858 of the kits needed to be tested, according to Stein’s communications team. Just under 3,000 kits did not require testing, as the kit was linked to a case in which a conviction had already been made or there was no clear and convincing evidence the kit was tied to a crime. Another 1,405 kits have not been tested as they were unreported or anonymous, according to Stein’s team.

Increase in submission of evidence

With the passage of the Survivor Act, the laboratory system saw an increase in the submission of sexual assault kits from approximately 600 annually to 2,200, said Amanda Thompson, assistant director of administrative operations at the State Crime Lab. She said it’s anticipated this rate will remain steady.

Stein said Tuesday this increase in reported cases “is a good thing, because that means more cases will be solved in real time. “

He said it was a priority to make sure a backlog never occurs again. To avoid this, the state implemented the kit tracking system and a requirement that whenever a hospital produces a sexual assault kit, it has to be sent to law enforcement within 48 hours, he said. After that, law enforcement has 45 days to send it to an accredited lab, he said.

Two Survivor Act sponsors, Democratic Rep. Mary Belk from Mecklenburg County and former Republican Rep. Jamie Boles of Moore County, spoke at the event. “It’s been a long process,” Boles said, “and I’m proud to have worked closely with my colleagues in the legislature on both sides of the aisle and the DOJ.”

It’s “important to know that this was a bipartisan effort and it took all of us, state, local and federal. Both Republicans and Democrats, all put aside their differences to ensure that innocent victims in these cases were heard,” Boles said.