These Rape Victims Had to Sue to Get the Police to Investigate

By Valeriya Safronova and Rebecca Halleck
New York Times
May 23, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/us/rape-victims-kits-police-departments.html

As more women come forward to report sexual assault, some say law enforcement has failed them. ‘There was no collection of evidence,’ one victim said. ‘Except off my body.’

Evidence so neglected it grew mold. Calls to the authorities for help that went unanswered. Witnesses and victims who were never interviewed. These are just a handful of the claims that sexual assault survivors are making against law enforcement in courts around the country.

In at least seven places in recent years — Austin; San Francisco; Memphis; Houston; Baltimore; Greenwich, Conn.; and the Village of Robbins, Ill. — women have filed lawsuits in an attempt to force the police and prosecutors to improve their practices.

The unconnected lawsuits are adding a set of novel legal arguments to the search for solutions in the wake of the #MeToo movement, which exposed failures to recognize and pursue sex offenders. The lawsuits argue that sexual assault victims do not receive equal treatment compared with victims of other violent crimes, and that failure to test physical evidence collected from their bodies amounts to unreasonable search and seizure.