In 2018, Missouri had about 7,000 untested sexual assault kits. State Attorney General Catherine Hanaway told Missourinet that is no longer the case.
“The great news is we are entirely caught up,” said Hanaway. “It was great leadership by General (Andrew) Bailey and his team. They had a huge backlog of rape kits that had not been tested. All that testing has now been done.”
The kits contain DNA evidence from sexual assault victims that can be used to identify their attackers.
The backlog was first announced by then-Attorney General Josh Hawley. Then it was inherited by fellow Republican Eric Schmitt when he was appointed to the position. The work was then passed on to Bailey, who was next in line as attorney general.
Hanaway, who took over the office in September, told Missourinet keeping up with the flow remains a priority.
“And what we want to do is make sure that we partner with local prosecutors to make sure that we’re able to get as many convictions as a result of the tests,” said Hanaway.
Under the SAFE Kits initiative launched by Schmitt, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance provided a $2.8 million dollar grant to help Missouri gather and inventory the untested kits that sat on law enforcement shelves, in hospital storage rooms, and crime labs, collecting dust for decades. Schmitt’s office held several events around the state to collect kits.
The state created a way to store and track the kits. Then a crime lab reviewed the evidence samples against the DNA profiles of convicted offenders and other crime scenes using a DNA database. Some of the results have led to prosecutions and convictions.
The cost to test each rape kit was about $1,000 per kit.
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