HIGHLAND (IN)
NWI Times
April 4, 2018
By Lauren Cross
Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter, the Fair Haven rape crisis center, the county’s Sexual Assault Response Team and others on Wednesday announced a series of reforms aimed at ending the local backlog of untested rape kits.
The policy changes were sparked by the results released in December of a state survey of law enforcement agencies and health care providers that found 2,560 completed sexual assault examination kits — that potentially could be used at a criminal trial — were never submitted for laboratory testing.
The survey found nearly 240 rape kits in law enforcement’s possession were never tested in Lake County.
Considered a large undertaking, the county’s Sexual Assault Response Team, or SART, in partnership with Fair Haven committed on Wednesday to testing every non-anonymous rape kit performed on or after Jan. 1, 2008.
Any rape kit performed before that date will be destroyed unless the survivor contacts Fair Haven at 219-218-2552 before Aug. 6 and seeks testing, Carter said.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.