Prosecutor leads effort to test long-abandoned rape test kits

This story sickened me. To think of all the rape victims went through at the hospital in hopes the perpetrator would be caught and convicted.....the evidence-collecting, the testing, the interviews.....and then the rape kits were filed away and forgotten?


http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/15/15848051-prosecutor-leads-effort-to-test-long-abandoned-rape-kits-brings-justice-to-victims?lite

Frightening...
So far, 600 kits have been tested, and investigators say that they have discovered evidence of 21 serial rapists.

One kit from 2002 revealed DNA belonging to a man who was in prison for the murder of three women. The murders had been committed during the seven years the rape kit sat on a warehouse shelf.

I doubt this is a Detroit-only problem. I have read about this before... and it probably wasn't about Detroit... although it could have been.

What a sad state of affairs it is when women, having been subjected to the trauma of rape, undergo the humiliation of having a rape kit sample taken... only to have the damn kit sit on a shelf somewhere.

Not to mention the other rapes and murders that occurred.

This makes me sick.

Obviously women who are raped are traumatized. The few who choose to press charges usually describe that process as being traumatized all over again or traumatized a second time. To go through that then find out someone stuck your rape kit on a shelf in a warehouse instead of taking it to the lab to get it tested... completely unfathomable to me.

I can't understand how this happens. I can see how someone could make a human error if it happened once, but ELEVEN THOUSAND TIMES?? There is something systemically wrong there. And where the hell is Internal Affairs??

It sickens me too, Rice. Unbelievable.

Kudos to the female prosecutor who exposed this!