The Dallas Police Department has finally cleared a backlog of hundreds of untested forensic sexual assault and rape test kits, some dating back as far as 1996.
At the beginning of 2023, Dallas, which once had the largest share of untested kits in the state of Texas, still had roughly 1880 kits awaiting analysis.
However, thanks to federal and city funding, the city managed to send off all the old kits to laboratories by the year’s end, the Dallas Observer reports.
“I still say that one is too many,” a survivor named Lavinia Masters told the paper.
Ms Masters, who was raped in 1985 and waited more than 20 years for her test kit to be reopened, is the namesake of the 2019 Lavinia Masters Act, a state law which mandated a timeline of testing and preservation for kits.
“I know we’ve come a long way, and I applaud that, I’m grateful for that, but still, I don’t see the excuse of having any kits on the shelf,” she added. “I know you tell me it’s about training or funding, or outsourcing the testing to different labs, but having so many kits on the shelf just doesn’t rest well with me, it just doesn’t.”
Officials and advocates hope the Dallas kits will provide vital new forensic information about old sex crimes as the statute of limitations edges closer in some older instances.
Hundreds of kits remain untested in other large departments as of the year’s end, per the Observer, including Fort Worth, which still has approximately 200 sitting on its shelf.
The pandemic, staffing shortages, lack of funding, and a lack of emphasis have all been blamed for testing delays in Texas and across the country.
In the US, more than 100,000 kits haven’t been tested, which victims’ advocates argue is a major miscarriage of justice.
While good data doesn’t exist to suggest the average wait time, case-specific evidence suggests some people can wait over 30 years for testing, often leaving them legally unable to press charges on any evidence that turns up.
