Region has nearly 100 rape kits that need testing

Butler County law enforcement agencies and other agencies in the surrounding area have almost 100 boxes of evidence from sexual-assault examinations that have never been tested or need to be retested, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office has found.

The untested rape kits were among more than 5,000 found during a federally-funded, statewide inventory conducted by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.

In 2008, Congress approved a Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) grant to be used by states to “clear out back-logged untested sexual assault kits,” said Chris Nuelle, spokesman for the AG’s Office.

“The initial (Missouri) grant was for $2.8 million and covers the process of completing the inventory, shipping and testing roughly 1,500 kits and working to design and implement an electronic tracking system,” Nuelle said.

Addressing that backlog, Nuelle said, has been a priority of Attorney General Eric Schmitt since he took office.

“One of the first initiatives the attorney general announced was the SAFE Kit Initiative,” Nuelle explained. “Since launching that initiative, the attorney general has worked with the initiative’s statewide coordinator, Judge M. Keithley Williams, to ensure that untested sexual assault kits are being shipped and tested as expeditiously as possible.”

Nuelle said there are three major prongs to Schmitt’s SAFE Kit Initiative: completing an exhaustive inventory, creating and implementing an electronic tracking system and shipping and testing the backlogged kits.

“In 2017, then-Attorney General Josh Hawley completed an audit that uncovered roughly 5,000 untested sexual assault kits in the state of Missouri, which prompted the office to apply for that federal grant funding.” Nuelle said.

There were some departments/agencies that did not respond, so it wasn’t an exact number, he said.

Exhaustive inventory

Later, Nuelle said, Schmitt, as part of the SAFE Kit Initiative, completed an exhaustive inventory of all of Missouri’s law enforcement agencies and hospitals.

“To complete this inventory, Judge Williams and her team reached out to every agency they felt could possess SAFE Kits to get a full and detailed accounting of how many remained at each agency,” Nuelle explained.

The SAFE kit inventory, Nuelle said, included 631 law enforcement agencies, 193 health care providers, and four ancillary organizations.

In total, he said, the inventory located “7,019 in-scope SAFE kits.”

Law enforcement agencies held 5,670 (80.8%) kits, health care providers held 1,089 (15.5%).

Police reports were located for 5,285 (75.3%) kits, while reports were either never filed or inaccessible for 1,734 (24.7%).

Area numbers

The inventory shows Butler County has 54 untested kits, with six at the Butler County Sheriff’s Department and 48 at the Poplar Bluff Police Department.

Carter County also has four untested kits — three at the Carter County Sheriff’s Department and one at the Ellsinore Police Department.

Ripley County agencies did not report any untested kits, while Dunklin County agencies reported 11.

In Stoddard County, the Dexter Police Department reported 17, and the Stoddard County Sheriff’s Department reported seven.

The Wayne County Sheriff’s Department reported two untested kits.

Of the untested kits, Nuelle said, they fall in two categories — those collected prior to April 30, 2018, which have not been tested at a lab, and those which were tested at a lab before Jan. 1, 1998 (before advancements in DNA testing).

Thirty-six of the kits held by the Poplar Bluff Police Department fall into the latter category. These were previously tested but need to be tested again, under advanced DNA testing. This category also includes six of the tests held by the Dexter Police Department and one held by the Stoddard County Sheriff’s Department.

Testing

In recent months many of the untested kits statewide have been collected and tested, but at this time, Nuelle said, none of the locally-collected kits are among them.

“We do plan to make it down there at some point, but I don’t know when,” Nuelle said.

Due to the number of untested kits statewide, Nuelle said, regional shipping events are being held, where a larger police department, with more capacity, gathers untested sexual assault kits from neighboring, smaller departments/agencies to then ship that group of kits to the lab.

“This makes it easier to gather kits from across the state and preserves a tight chain of custody, which is crucial down the line for potential prosecutions,” Nuelle said.

The regional shipping events began in December at the Springfield Police Department, with an additional 15 shipping events occurring across the state, Nuelle said.

In Southeast Missouri, he said, shipping events have occurred at the sheriff’s departments in New Madrid and St. Francois counties.

“Through those shipping events, we have sent over 1,300 kits to the lab to be tested,” he said.

To avoid overwhelming the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s crime lab, Nuelle said, the attorney general’s office has opted to use a private lab in Virginia, and those costs for testing are covered in the grant money.

“Even as COVID hit the state of Missouri, we did not experience any slowdown in shipping, as we took, and still do take, precautions to mitigate the spread of COVID at shipping events,” Nuelle said. “ ... We will continue to host regional shipping events and work on implementing the electronic tracking system.

“We have also applied for an additional round of grant funding that we expect will be announced in September.”