A new bill called the Sexual Assault Survivor’s Rights Act has been introduced into the Senate and will standardize the rights of sexual assault victims. The system for pressing charges of sexual assault is convoluted, making prosecution extremely difficult for victims.
Hopefully, this bill will begin to provide an easier and less emotionally damaging process for sexual assault victims to receive justice.
Currently, states have various systems of cataloguing and testing rape kits, but this bill will standardize those systems. It will allow survivors to know where their rape kit is at all times, whether it has been tested and what the results of that test are.
This is incredibly important for sexual assault survivors who decide to press charges.
Not every survivor decides to press charges right away, as a trial is often a harrowing and emotionally traumatic experience. Investigations into sexual assault cases have been known to devolve into discussions of what the victim was wearing at the time and other unhelpful and victim-blaming inqueries, therefore a lot of survivors choose not to prosecute.
Despite the importance of these kits, many police departments have mishandled this evidence. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, there is a backlog of rape kit tests that are backlogged because tests are never sent to the lab, or the lab never tested it.
In November, the Guardian reported on rape kit procedure and this backlog, finding that police departments would destroy rape kits if “they deemed allegations unfounded, alleged that victims didn’t cooperate or arrested suspects without the benefit of DNA.”
If a survivor decides to press charges, the rape kit is integral to his or her case. Not only does a rape kit attempt to use DNA to identify the attacker, but it also is usually the only physical evidence available to show that a crime was committed.
This bill will standardize the procedures and will allow victims to keep track of their rape kits. This standardization will greatly ease their struggle to press charges.
This bill will also require that victims have access to sexual assault counselors and are educated about their legal options.
The Sexual Assault Survivors Rights Act will also implement a task force to observe the changes made and their effectiveness. This bill is a huge step for rights for sexual assault survivors.
For a long time, the system has been broken for sexual assault survivors, extending the trauma of the crime committed against them. Hopefully now, we are one step closer to giving these survivors justice.
Jordrile@indiana.edu
@RiledUpIDs
