Read MassLive’s coverage of untested rape kits in Massachusetts.
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After Massachusetts’ first mandatory inventory of untested rape kits counted 387 kits in 13 of the state’s 14 counties, advocates say they believe that number is too low to be accurate.
The state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security in June asked more than 400 reporting agencies -- including municipal law enforcement, sheriff’s offices, university law enforcement and hospital security -- how many untested rape kits were on evidence shelves. The office did not include Bristol County, which has received a federal grant to count its rape kits, or the Boston Police Department, which has its own crime lab.
Data released by the office indicated that aside from Bristol County and Boston, police counted 387 untested rape kits, the oldest of which was from 1971 and collected in Winchester.
States similar in size, or smaller than Massachusetts, have counted thousands of untested rape kits in similar inventories.
“The numbers just don’t really add up,” said Ilse Knecht, the director of advocacy and policy for the Joyful Heart Foundation. “If you said 3,870 I might be like, well, alright, maybe places have been cleaning up over the last four or five years. But 387, they might as well just start over and just do it over.”
New England’s second-largest city, Worcester, reported zero untested kits. Some of the state’s other large cities, like Springfield, Lowell, Quincy and Lynn reported zero kits.
“This is really troubling to us and unless all of these cities are telling us that they’ve been testing every single kit that’s come in forever, there’s no way that this is right,” Knecht said.
At one point before the inventory, Katia Santiago-Taylor, the advocacy and legislative affairs manager at the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, said she heard there could have been as many as 10,000 untested rape kits in Massachusetts.
“Where I stand is I was surprised by the 387,” Santiago-Taylor said. “I think that 387 is a little low. I think that 10,000 is way too high.”
Santiago-Taylor said she would like more information about the 387 kits, including whether they ever made it to the crime lab and were sent back untested for some reason.
In response to advocates’ view that 387 kits is too little to be accurate, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security said, “EOPSS and the State Police Crime Lab worked closely with local law enforcement agencies to identify previously unsubmitted kits under the provisions of the recent criminal justice reform. All agencies adhered to the definitions defined by the law and this is the number of kits that were reported as not previously submitted.”
All of the 387 untested kits are now in the testing process, according to EOPSS.
Massachusetts’s numbers much smaller than nationwide trend
Data collected by advocacy groups indicates that states with populations similar to Massachusetts, or smaller, have counted thousands of untested kits during the process of implementing rape kit reform.
“End the Backlog” is a program of the Joyful Heart Foundation, which seeks to identify the extent of the nation’s untested rape kit backlog as well as the best practices for eliminating it.
In states that have started or completed rape kit reform, many have discovered thousands of forgotten kits.
North Carolina has 15,160 untested kits, according to End the Backlog. Tennessee has 9,062 kits. Missouri has counted 5,424 kits. In Indiana, 4,980. Alaska has 2,568. Kansas counted 2,220. In Vermont, only 58 untested kits were counted, according to the organization.
States with smaller populations than Massachusetts reported a larger amount of untested rape kits, Knecht pointed out.
“You look at places like Kansas and they got 100 percent participation across the state,” she said.
The 387 count in Massachusetts is not a full statewide inventory, as it lacks numbers from Boston police and all the towns and cities in Bristol County.
Bristol County received a $2 million federal Sexual Assault Kit Initiative grant to identify and test previously untested rape kits collected in that county.
A preliminary inventory indicated 2,124 rape kits submitted by county law enforcement to the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab dating back to 1983 were never tested or were only partially tested, according to the Bristol County grant application, obtained by MassLive through a public records request.
A total of 2,273 rape kits were sent to the Crime Lab from Bristol County during that time period, meaning only 149 were fully tested for DNA at the lab, according to the data.
“Prior to state criminal justice reforms, Bristol County applied for and received a federal grant to conduct their own inventory and began this process prior to the beginning of state inventory efforts. Previously unsubmitted kits from Bristol will be sent to the lab for testing,” said Felix Browne, a spokesman for EOPSS.
Knecht argued that a criminal just bill passed in Massachusetts last year, which called for various measures of rape kit reform, states a rape kit inventory should be statewide.
The law reads: “Annually, on or before September 1st, the following reports regarding the previous fiscal year shall be submitted to the executive office of public safety and security by law enforcement agencies, medical facilities, crime laboratories, and any other facilities that receive, maintain, store or preserve sexual assault evidence kit. The reports shall contain: (i) the total number of all kits containing forensic samples collected or received; (ii) the date of collection or receipt of each kit; (iii) the category of each kit; (iv) the sexual assault that was reported to law enforcement; (v) whether or not the victim chose not to file a report with law enforcement (non-investigatory); (vi) the status of the kit;”
“The law is the law," Knecht said. "Every jurisdiction that has kits is supposed to report them.”
Possible explanations for low count of untested rape kits
Even with a statewide inventory, it’s impossible to know how many untested rape kits were possibly destroyed over the last few decades.
“It’s possible a lot of these places were destroying kits. It’s very possible," said Knecht. "So maybe the reporting is zero now. But I’d like to get to the bottom of what kits were there and what happened to them.”
Santiago-Taylor believes that law enforcement, advocates and others in Massachusetts started talking about policies and procedures for rape kits before other states.
“I think Massachusetts has been so proactive over the years that they have tried to keep up with making sure that survivors’ evidence is processed the way it’s supposed to be processed,” Santiago-Taylor said. “I have nothing bad to say about the Crime Lab."
Legislation passed in 2016 that requires rape kits to be stored for 15 years, in line with the statute of limitations for sexual assault.
Before then, practices were different, Santiago-Taylor explained. All rape kits were supposed to go to the Crime Lab. If survivors did not report an assault or rape to police, sometimes kits were sent back to police stations. In cases where assaults and rapes were not reported, it was practice to destroy rape kits.
It could be one explanation for a low amount of untested rape kits on evidence shelves.
“Many kits that were never reported may have been destroyed because that was a practice,” Santiago-Taylor said, adding, “I’m sure there were some kits that never made it to the crime lab when they were supposed to.”
Asked about the number of untested kits, EOPSS pointed to a 2015 inventory of untested rape kits. The inventory was not mandatory, and only 75 departments responded, many reporting zero or few untested rape kits. Massachusetts has 351 municipalities.
At the time, advocates said they found those numbers hard to believe.
Untested rape kits have been lost or destroyed in Massachusetts, even when a crime is reported to police.
That’s what happened to Michelle Bowdler, a Massachusetts woman who was raped in her Boston apartment in 1984. Decades later, Bowdler found out her rape kit sat at the Boston Police Department untouched until it was lost or destroyed.