The Kentucky Attorney General’s Office is providing some additional money to test rape kits that have languished in the state crime lab.
Attorney General Andy Beshear has announced his office is providing $4.5 million to the Kentucky State Police crime lab to buy additional equipment and hire more workers to conduct the testing. The money comes from unrelated lawsuit settlements won by the state.
Beshear said the kits are more than a box on a dusty shelf.
"They represent victims who have had the courage to not only report, but to undergo one of the most thorough physical, forensics examinations that can be asked for, and what have we done? We've locked that courage in a box and let in languish on a shelf, but no more," stated Beshear.
An audit last year found that more than 3,000 kits in the commonwealth had gone untested due to a lack of funding and staff.
Michelle Kuiper knows what it's like to wait for justice. She was sexually assaulted in the 1990s and waited 17 years for her attacker to be sent to prison.
"Just because victims of sexual violence are not a gunshot wound does not mean that they are not an emergency," Kuiper remarked.
The rape kits contain DNA evidence recovered from victims of sexual assault. Police check that evidence against a national database of DNA profiles to look for suspects.
