RICHMOND, Va. — A statewide effort to eliminate Virginia's backlog of rape kits is finally complete.
Attorney General Mark Herring made the announcement on Wednesday, saying the project, which took about five years to complete, was a mammoth undertaking, and the first step in transforming how sexual assault is handled in Virginia.
A total of 2,665 Physical Evidence Recovery Kits (or PERKs) were tested and more than 850 DNA profiles were uploaded to the national database. Of those 2,665 PERKs, 354 hits have already been sent to law enforcement agencies, Herring said. Charges against a Spotsylvania man have already been filed, and Herring expects additional charges to come to light.
In an effort to keep the backlog of untested kits from piling up again, the attorney general's office has been working with the Virginia Department of Forensic Science (DFS)on a statewide PERK tracking system.
The tracking system allows survivors of sexual assault, law enforcement hospitals and labs to track rape kits through the entire process.
"This is a true catalyst for real changes in the way Virginia approaches, investigates and prosecutes sexual violence," Herring said. "Virginia's rape kit backlog is finally gone and it's never coming back."
Herring stressed the importance of a victim-centered approach to sexual assault investigation and testing.
"Behind every (kit), there is a story," Herring said. "We owe it to survivors to do the best we can."
Debbie Smith is one of those survivors. She knows the agony of waiting for someone to test the evidence from her rape kit. The Virginia woman was grabbed from her home in 1989, dragged into the woods and sexually assaulted for hours. It took authorities five years to test her kit. When the DNA was finally entered into the national database, it got a hit. Her case was solved.
"I literally remember taking a deliberate breath because I wanted to live again," Smith told WUSA9 last year.
Smith was on hand again Wednesday to express her gratitude to Herring and those involved in the project for "conquering the backlog."
"I used to say that rape was the whispered crime, and now here we are today having a press conference all about sexual assault. We certainly have come a long way," she said.
Eliminating Virginia's backlog of rape kits was supported by two grants totaling $3.4 million secured by the attorney general and DFS. The first grant provided $1.4 million to test almost 1,800 kits that had been collected prior to 2014 and the testing on that phase of the project was completed in March 2019. The second grant from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) provided another $1 million to test almost 900 kits that had been collected between 2014 and 2016.
"Thanks to this initiative, the citizens of Virginia have a greater hope for justice," Smith said.