NEW YORK CITY — Vice President Joe Biden showed up personally to support the Manhattan District Attorney's plan to fund $38 million in grants to states outside of New York to help clear a nationwide backlog of rape kits at a press conference in the city on Thursday.
The grants would help rape survivors, police and prosecutors in states near and far, but could help New Yorkers as well, as a rape kit across the country could be the key to a crime committed in Manhattan, Biden said at the conference held in the headquarters of the New York Medical Examiner, which was also attended by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
“You’re as likely to find a rapist from Times Square in Ogden, Utah, as you are in Times Square,” Biden said. “You’re as likely to find him in Oregon or Mississippi as you are in Times Square.”
The two-year grants will go to 32 jurisdictions in 20 states from Oregon to Florida, but not including New York, with awards ranging from $97,000 to $2 million, and will help test approximately 56,475 rape kits, according to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. The funds are coming from assets seized from several international banks punished for violating United States sanctions, he added.
The testing initiative will roll out alongside a similar program from the federal Justice Department that will pledge $41 million to test an estimated 13,500 rape kits in 20 jurisdictions nationwide, as well as fund a study of how to prevent a future backlog, according to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who joined Biden and Vance on Thursday to announce the programs.
Findings from rape kit tests have helped lock up serial offenders, and have also led to the exoneration of wrongfully convicted men, according to Vance. But despite representing a trove of evidence that could potentially help solve thousands of crimes, more than 70,000 rape kits sit collecting dust in evidence rooms across the country because police and prosecutors lack either the funds or the will to test them, according to Vance.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office managed to clear its own backlog of rape kits in 2003, and has worked aggressively since then to promptly test the kits as they come in, Vance said.
The process of collecting evidence for a rape kit is lengthy and invasive, and does little in the aftermath of a rape to relieve the initial trauma of the assault, and if the kits sit around collecting dust, they do little to encourage rape survivors to come forward and report crimes against them, Biden said.
“Studies show that fewer than half the women who are violated today report their crime, because they don’t want to be raped by the system,” he said, raising his voice. “They don’t want to go through it all over again, especially when they think it will be to no avail.”
Efforts to clear rape kit backlogs and to take accusations of sexual assault seriously will help survivors feel supported enough to come forward, Biden added.
