"On the shelf in front of us were 344 kits that had been returned from the lab in 2017. Some were nearly two decades old. 344 names, 344 stories. For months, Harris and his colleagues had been debating a question: Should every victim whose name was on this shelf be notified that their kit had finally been tested? Or would reminding someone of their rape — out of the blue, years later, with no promise of a solution — cause them unnecessary harm?
The experiences of other cities offered no obvious answer. “I didn’t see them wrestle with any issue as deeply, with as much worry and compassion, as this one,” says Rebecca Campbell, a researcher who spent three years observing the handling of Detroit’s untested kits. “This one brought them to their knees.” In Detroit, it was ultimately decided that, at least at first, victims would be notified only if their kits resulted in a “hit,” meaning the DNA found in the box matched a person in the Combined DNA Index System, a national database of offenders better known as CODIS.
Houston tried a different model. A hotline was set up and publicized, so that any victim who wanted information about their old kit could ask for it. Then, police and prosecutors combed through the CODIS hits and decided which cases actually had a chance of moving forward in the criminal justice system. Victims were notified only if their cases seemed “actionable.”
“What’s at stake is the well-being and mental health of sexual assault victims,” says Noël Busch-Armendariz, a researcher who was involved in Houston’s process. “You never know where people are in their lives and what support systems they have or don’t have ready for them.”...
In other cities, notifications had led to breakthroughs, where a victim, reminded of her assault after all these years, came forward with information that changed a case. In Louisville, there had been a case the lieutenant was certain would never be accepted by a prosecutor. Any detective, he said, would have agreed. Then they notified the victim, and because of new statements she made, a serial offender has been charged with her assault.
In Virginia Beach, however, there was no such moment. Meanwhile, an important debate about what a law should do was now overshadowed by confusion about what the law did do. Something had clearly gone wrong inside the creaky machinery of government."
FB: The headline is dour, but there is actually a lot of good news in this article, stories of politicians and police officers and activists who really care and who succeeded in their campaigns
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