New system lets sex assault victims track cases in Florida

Florida’s prime regulation enforcement company stated Wednesday it’s months away from rolling out its new monitoring system statewide for rape kits that can give rape survivors simpler entry to information about their cases.

A 2015 survey by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found more than 13,000 rape kits had gone untested. In response, the next 12 months, the Legislature provided funding to clear the backlog and mandated that kits be despatched to labs inside 30 days of being acquired by regulation enforcement for processing. Then, crime labs have 120 days to finish an evaluation of the kits.

Still, critics argued sexual assault survivors have been in the darkish about essential information concerning the standing of their cases.

So in 2021, the state Legislature handed “Gail’s Law,” which required the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to create a monitoring system for sexual assault kits. At the time, there have been already 30 states and Washington D.C. that had carried out statewide databases for monitoring sexual assault kits.

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A package accommodates proof, comparable to a DNA pattern, that’s collected from the physique of a sexual assault sufferer by investigators. Once processed, the package can be utilized in prosecutions.

The system works like this: Rape kits could have a barcode and by utilizing a login and passcode on a web site, the survivor can select to be notified if there may be DNA matching, and comply with the package’s standing from testing to evaluation and when it adjustments palms from the medical facility to storage or into proof custody, and when regulation enforcement submits it to the lab.

Said FDLE Lab Director Jason Bundy: “We are happy that this program will clear up so much of the confusion for survivors about what happens to their kits.”

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The monitoring is now out there in 41 counties together with Jacksonville, Tallassee, Pensacola, and Pinellas, and will likely be out there statewide by July. South Florida, together with Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, aren’t among the many 41.

Gail’s Law is known as after Gail Gardner, who survived a sexual assault in 1988 by an armed man who broke into her house and raped her at knifepoint. Gardner needed to wait practically 30 years earlier than her package was examined to then study the perpetrator was already in jail on different assault expenses.

“For 30 years I didn’t know what happened to my kit, I didn’t have an idea what was next,” Gardner stated Wednesday, talking from Tallahassee.

State lawmakers stated this transfer places the facility again in the palms of survivors.

“I know it seems like forever but we’re getting there,” stated State Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando, who co-sponsored the invoice, on Wednesday. “It is time that sexual assault survivors have easy and streamlined access to information regarding the status of their sexual assault kits.”

Lisa J. Huriash may be reached at [email protected]. Follow on Twitter @LisaHuriash