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'You want justice': Washington state rape survivors wait as state addresses rape kit backlog

The state is making progress after thousands of rape kits sat untested for years, but fell short of its initial goal.

VANCOUVER, Wash. — An effort to clear the backlog of DNA rape kits in Washington state fell short of a deadline set by lawmakers.

Washington State Patrol (WSP) was supposed to start processing all new kits involving DNA samples collected in rape investigations within 45 days, starting May 1. It’s part of a law passed in 2019 to address the state’s backlog of 10,000 untested rape kits. That backlog has since been reduced to about 1,700 kits, according to WSP. They hope to meet the 45 day turnaround goal for new kits by the end of 2022.

“We committed to cutting that wait time by 90% from 600 days to 45 days,” said WSP Director of Communications Chris Loftis. “We're almost there. Had it not been for COVID, we would have been there months and months ago.”

RELATED: Washington law enforcement agencies receive funding to expand storage for sexual assault evidence

Loftis said the state receives an average of 193 new rape kits a month. More staff and new robotics at their expanded Vancouver lab allow that facility to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week to help meet the demand. Kits with DNA samples created before May 1 have been outsourced to labs outside Washington to make more room.

For rape survivors like “Jane,” who didn’t want to be identified, the wait is still frustrating. More than eight months after she survived a sexual assault in Southwest Washington, she is still waiting for results from her rape kit.

“It shouldn't take this long for a rape kit to come back,” Jane told KGW. “You want justice for other people if this has happened to them by the same person.”

Loftis said of the 10,000 backlogged kits they've tested, roughly 25% have come back with usable data. Of those, about 10% contained DNA samples that matched suspect profiles in existing cases, including some from other states.

“That means we have a serial criminal,” said Loftis. “And so the assumption that those [backlogged kits] were of little to no investigatory or prosecutorial value was just simply wrong.”

RELATED: Portland police investigator discusses lessons learned by clearing rape kit backlog

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