The state auditor is criticizing the State Police’s crime lab for delays in processing thousands of previously untested rape kits after a new state law went into effect in 2021.
“Our sexual assault evidence collection kits, also known as rape kits, had significant delays when being processed by the State Police crime lab that is overseen by the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security,” Diana DiZoglio, the state auditor, told GBH News.
“Those kits are not just numbers,” she added. “They represent lives who have been impacted by sexual assault right here in the commonwealth, so every delay that exists is another day that a survivor of sexual assault has to wait for justice to be served.
”It’s also a day that a suspected perpetrator ... is able to walk around in the commonwealth without that justice being served, which creates, obviously, a public safety threat.“
A new report takes aim at the speed with which the lab moved to process thousands of kits, as well as the care taken to protect survivors’ personal information, and appropriate communication with local prosecutors, in a period ranging from July 1, 2020 to October 31, 2022. The report was initiated by Suzanne Bump, DiZoglio’s predecessor as auditor.
In a statement provided to GBH News, an EOPSS spokesperson said that office ”appreciate[s] the review conducted by the Auditor’s office and [is] carefully reviewing the recommendations to determine further actions.“
The spokesperson said the number of previously untested rape kits in Massachusetts is now down to approximately 200, and is likely to reach zero by this fall.
At the time the law went into effect, over half of the kits were in the lab’s possession, according to a 2022 report. Some dated back as far as the 1990s.
”Massachusetts is a national leader in sexual assault evidence collection kit testing, [currently] meeting an unprecedented 30-day timeframe as compared to the national average of 90 to 120 days,“ the spokesperson said. ”We remain deeply committed to working in close collaboration with our partners to deliver justice, empower survivors, strengthen law enforcement’s response to sexual assault, and improve outcomes.“
In the fiscal year that ended last June, the crime lab met that 30-day timeframe 96% of the time, according to a report filed with the Legislature.
But in the 2020-2022 period DiZoglio’s office examined, thousands of “previously untested” kits remained. One of the report’s findings involves the speed with which the state moved to identify kits that contained so-called quantity-limited evidence, which must be tested exhaustively to attempt to obtain DNA evidence and are destroyed in the process.
A state law that took effect on July 1, 2021, and was aimed at processing roughly 6,500 previously untested kits mandated that the State Police crime lab identify all quantity-limited kits and notify the appropriate district attorney’s office within 90 days.
According to the auditor’s review, though, more than 3,000 of the 6,500 previously untested kits were not reviewed for possible quantity-limited evidence within that timeframe.
In addition, DiZoglio’s review found that, in a sample of 2,000 kits that did contain quantity-limited evidence, just 21% were reported to district attorneys within the required 90 days.
DiZoglio’s office also found that the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security allowed personal identifying information to be inappropriately included in its database of sexual crimes, and that a system designed to allow victims of sexual assault to track the location of their kits frequently yielded incorrect information.
In responses that were included in the auditor’s report, the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security asserted, among other things, that it complied as quickly as possible with the requirements of the 2021 law, and that personal information was erroneously included in that database due to inappropriate reporting by medical professionals.
