Throughout New Mexico there are about 5,400 untested rape kits, but State Auditor Tim Keller says those numbers are improving in Dona Ana County.
“Down here the numbers have actually gone down,” Keller said. “There was roughly about 100 in the county and the city. And actually since we started tracking the backlog and shining the light on the issue that number is significantly down, and that’s a good thing. But we want to make sure systems are set up, so the backlogs don’t happen again in the future.”
Connie Monahan, Statewide coordinator for the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners, says it was tough when nurses found out the evidence they collect from victims of sexual assault was not being processed.
“It breaks my heart,” Monahan said. “And the idea that the system failed them, I don’t think it’s any individual, any one individual that we’ve been working with is committed to the work, but we have to work better as a team. So that we understand when one person doesn’t do something how that impacts the next level of response.”
Auditor Keller says there are many reasons a kit could go untested.
“A couple of examples,” Keller said. “Sometimes a victim will decide not to go forward, they just want to move on and forget about it. Other reasons are because there might be lawyers involved; there might be some sort of settlement or that kind of thing. There’s also situations where there is other conflicting court cases, essentially legal red tape that ties up these for years.”
Keller says it’s important to test the kits even if they don’t go to trial.
“Because they need to go into a national database,” Keller said. “It’s called the CODIS database, and that way nationally folks can cross-reference if sexual offenders have done other assaults in other states, so that’s the public safety issue that we can resolve regardless whether or not individuals proceed with their own particular evidence.”
Keller says they are beginning to identify ways to resolve the problem.
“There’s bottlenecks at the state laboratories,” Keller said. “With respect to equipment. There is also just prioritization in every police department saying this particular type of evidence, here’s the protocol you should follow. Those are not universal; they are different in every jurisdiction. And I think thirdly, It’s also just a notion of sunshine, as soon as we shine a light on this and we start tracking this particular inventory, sure enough those inventories start to drop.”
Connie Monohan says victims also need to be more aware of what happens to their evidence.
“To activate and engage the victim in the process sooner than later,” Monohan said. “And that’s going to be a hard process when you think about how do we apologize, how do we say here’s a kit that wasn’t tested for the past 20 years, how we give them choices. And guide them through what we want them to do, but also what they want to do, and give them the choice if they don’t want to go through legal proceedings that’s also a viable and good healthy choice for them.”
Keller says they will be releasing a report of best practices after the audit is complete.
