JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A candidate for local office announced a plan to speed up the testing of rape kits Thursday.
The founder of Reclaim Global, Inc., Dr. Kaye Smith, has worked with 1,500 survivors of sexual assault.
“My rape kit never went anywhere. It’s sitting on a shelf gathering dust,” Smith said. “Not one of them has ever said they were satisfied with the way their rape kit got processed.”
Wes White, who's running for state attorney in the 4th Circuit, is calling for legislation that will mandate law enforcement to send all rape kits to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab within 72 hours.
“They’ve got to get out the door. They cannot sit in a room where they’re forgotten and the victims are forgotten. Because that is precisely what’s happened,” White said.
One year ago, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office had nearly 2,000 rape kits that had never been tested. A JSO spokesperson said it wasn’t a backlog.
Those rape kits were sitting on the shelf because either the rapist had already confessed, or the victim did not want to move forward with the case.
One year ago, JSO decided to start sending those kits to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for processing at a forensic database.
In May, JSO had 380 untested kits.
“There’s a funding issue here, we got a good plan in place that addresses a number of those every month, and we've done a good job (in) getting that down,” Williams said.
JSO said they cannot say how long, on average, it takes to get a rape kit out the door for processing.
They’ve submitted a request to their records unit and said the answer could take days.
Even if those rape kits make it out of the building and into a lab faster, FDLE spokesperson Gretl Plessinger, said it takes an average of 79 days to process a rape kit.
There are two possibilities in the works right now to help shorten wait times.
Janet Adkins, a representative of the Duval legislative delegation chair, has proposed a bill that would require law enforcement to submit rape kits to a lab within 21 days.
Spokesperson for the state attorney’s office, Jackelyn Barnard, said they are waiting to hear back from the federal government on a $2 million grant to help investigate and prosecute rape. The office expects to hear back in the next few weeks.