Many rape victims cling to a hope that the science of DNA will someday identify their attackers. But it only works if evidence is analyzed, and that step has been neglected in thousands of rape cases in Ohio and hundreds of thousands of cases across the nation.
State officials estimate that more than 3,000 kits containing rape evidence have been gathering dust in Ohio police department evidence rooms, in some cases for decades.
Victims are often unaware that police have set aside, or worse, tossed out, evidence of an attack that nurses collected from the victims' bodies.
But the evidence - bodily fluids and hairs, for instance - often remained unexamined unless police had a suspect, law-enforcement authorities say. Only then could investigators take samples of similar evidence from the suspect and test it for comparison to evidence taken from the victim.
Forensic science, however, has advanced rapidly in the last couple of years, outpacing the dated investigative techniques of overburdened police forces.
Now, police no longer need to wait to find a suspect. The technical advances give investigators the ability to extract, analyze and compare a person's genetic makeup, or DNA, analyze it immediately and use computers to compare it to cataloged DNA samples from thousands of potential suspects.
Yet police have been slow in changing investigative policies, and still leave rape kits unanalyzed if they don't have a suspect. In Cleveland, 650 kits are stored untested, and Akron and Toledo have 350 and 800, respectively, according to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation.
The situation is common across the country, with estimates of more than 180,000 rape kits languishing in police property rooms, said Kellie Greene, an Orlando, Fla., rape victim whose own DNA evidence was not analyzed for three years.
"Usually if there is a rape with no suspect and the victim does not stay active, they become cold cases and are pretty much forgotten about," said Greene, who gives awareness seminars through her group, Speaking Out About Rape. "I think most of the general public is under the impression that everything gets processed."
About 4,500 rapes are reported in Ohio each year, according to BCI. Nationally, a woman is raped or sexually assaulted every two minutes and one in six women is attacked in her lifetime, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network and the U.S. Department of Justice.
"Any backlog means that rapists may be walking free," said Jamie Zuieback, of the rape and abuse national network.
An Ohio rape victim recently shared the agony of worrying about the languishing evidence and a rapist walking the street. The Bowling Green woman told her story to the Ohio Sexual Assault Task Force.
"It is like a deadly poison. The longer you wait, the harder it is to treat, and eventually it can lead to a spiraling downfall of all that you have known as life," the victim said. "How can we protect other women from having this happen to them when these guys who have committed these crimes do not have this hanging over their heads?"
Financial incentive
For the past 15 months, since BCI initiated its electronic DNA database, police and crime labs have been urged to submit their rape kits for comparison to the 34,000 DNA profiles gathered in Ohio from convicted felons and crime scenes. BCI and the federal government pay for the testing.
The FBI has amassed another 900,000 DNA profiles from 49 states and 14 foreign countries.
Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery tomorrow is expected to announce a financial-incentive plan, paid for in part by a $2.2 million federal grant, to kick-start the flow of stored rape kits to BCI.
A pilot program will be started with the Cleveland Police Department, then opened to all departments in the state. About $200,000 of the grant money will be used to give $100 to Ohio police departments for every rape kit they submit, said Bret Crow, a Montgomery spokesman.
Before BCI compiled its database of DNA profiles known as CODIS - Combined DNA Index System - police had no way to conduct a comparison test in rape cases with unknown suspects, said BCI Superintendent Ted Almay. Now they do, but police have been slow to react.
Some departments, forced by heavy caseloads to prioritize cases, still have policies dictating that kits be analyzed only when a suspect is known, he said. Others simply don't recognize the new databases' value - and the chance that a bit of extra work could yield an arrest.
"We're trying to change the mind-set and the culture of law enforcement," Almay said.
Case load contributes to the slow response. "It's really an urban problem," Almay said. "They may get up to 100 sexual assaults in a month, so for them it is a matter of, which crime do we have the best ability to solve?"
The national and state CODIS systems were created to solve formerly unsolvable crimes, but it can't without comparative evidence, Dwight Adams, the FBI's assistant laboratory division director, told a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Congress is considering a host of bills to provide millions of dollars in federal aid to erase the backlog of untested rape kits.
As of March, the national system has assisted in more than 4,700 investigations in 32 states, Adams said.
Closer to home, BCI's DNA comparisons have matched 35 offenders to crimes and, in 25 occasions, have linked the same suspect to two or more crimes, Almay said.
Just last month, investigators used a DNA comparison to identify Ronald Beard, 34, as the suspect in the Jan. 11 murder of 70-year-old Eleanor McGill, of Cleveland. Evidence from the crime scene matched DNA that Beard had provided in 1987 after a conviction for aggravated burglary.
Too many cases
Police nationwide are struggling with similar problems in using the evidence gathered from rape kits.
Some departments are overwhelmed with cases and too few investigators. They must prioritize cases based on seriousness of the crime and a court date and whether or not a suspect exists.
Cleveland Public Safety Director Jim Draper referred questions to the department. Kevin Kilbane, deputy chief of police special operations, was unable to respond to specific questions.
Since Feb. 2001, Cleveland has sent 16 kits and Akron has sent 118 to BCI for DNA testing, according to state records.
Storage space is also a problem for many police departments, and in the past, some, like Akron, have discarded kits when the statute of limitations expired. The statute of limitations for rape was six years but was changed to 20 years in 1999.
Capt. Elizabeth Daugherty of the Akron Police Department said victims have not been told about discarded kits, but are kept apprised of case developments.
For smaller departments like East Cleveland, BCI will analyze the kit and store DNA findings. Because space is tight, kits are stored for only three to six months in East Cleveland, said Police Chief Patricia Lane. If no suspect is named, the case is closed, the victim is notified and the kit is tossed out, Lane said.
BCI hopes to encourage police to follow up with victims when they submit rape kits under the new federally supported incentive program, though some resistance may occur.
"One law enforcement agency said they don't have time to go through the backlog," said Cynthia Shannon, BCI's CODIS administrator. "But if they collect samples and don't analyze them, it is no good to us."
To some, like the Toledo Police Department, with a backlog of 800 cases going back at least to the 1980s, the task will be monumental.
"It's a huge thing to do, and I don't know how we will handle it," said Sgt. George Kral, commander of Toledo's personal assault unit. "But rape is such a horrific crime. Even if there is no arrest but we can identify a [suspect], maybe that can give victims some peace of mind."
Police owe it to victims to do their best to identify suspects, said Chris Current, president of the Ohio Victim Witness Association, which provides victims' services.
"After being horribly raped, this only makes it worse in the minds of rape victims," Current said. "The evidence gathering itself is traumatizing. Why hasn't something been done about this?"
For now, victims should take action on their own, said Greene, the Orlando rape victim.
"The best advice I can give is to become very active," said Greene.
Greene pushed police to analyze her rape kit for DNA after she discovered it had only been processed for fluids. Eventually the DNA was matched to a man serving 25 years to life for another rape in Daytona. He was convicted and received a 22-year concurrent sentence for his attack on Greene. "You have to make phone calls to follow up. You are not into this to make friends. You are in this to find out who raped you."
