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August 16, 2025 50 mins

Rape kits are simple forensic evidence collection kits used when someone is sexually assaulted. But the story is deeper than this. Learn all about rape kits, the sad backlog problem, and what you can do to help, in this classic episode. 

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Chuck here with the selects pick for the week, and
this week it's a pretty heavy on everyone. This is
about rape kits and the episode is how rape kits work.
And this is from April second, twenty nineteen. And the
reason that I chose to select is because it's just
a super important topic about the funding of rape kits,
the lack of funding rather for rape kits, and the

(00:25):
backlog of processing rape kits. And it's something that should
be known far and wide. So that's why I picked
it for this week's episode. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. And now
whatever chipperness you might hear, my voice can decline from
here on out.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Man, this this is another one of those that's uh
tough topic. It's not gonna be loaded with jokes.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
No, I can't. I couldn't. I can't think of a
single one. And anytime like I started to be like,
oh maybe we should come with jokes, now, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Not like we do that anyway, right, Like this would
be a good place for a joke. Let me get
our writers.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
On its joke here in brackets.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yes obviously. Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
I mean if you saw the title about rape kits,
hopefully that is the trigger warning you need.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
But we might as well just say it out loud.
M h. Trigger warning for this one. That's all we
need to say, I think, right.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Pretty much. I mean we're talking about rape, sexual assault
in general, and specifically. I want to say, Chuck, I've
had on the list for a really long time rape
as a topic at I think it definitely deserves it,
but it's I've just been kind of walking past it
every time I go down the list, you know, right,
I think it's due, especially after this one. Yeah, but

(01:59):
it's it's almost like we needed to do this one first,
or else it wouldn't be stuff you should know, right,
if we didn't do something tangential, bigger topic. Sure, we'll
do that eventually. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
And also this comes out this is one of those
happenstance things. As I was researching and reading this stuff,
I was like, oh, you know what we should check
and see when Sexual Assault Awareness Month is?

Speaker 1 (02:23):
And it turned out it's April.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
And it turned out that April second, the day that
this drops is Day of Action, so they encourage people
to wear teal on April second, which is today.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
I'm wearing Well it's a mint green, but it's awfully
close to teal.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, it's weird how this is all coming together.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Like, yes, so you know, Action Day should be for
Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It should be like a purge,
like the Merge. Yeah, that's what it should.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
I haven't seen the movie, but.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
I guess yeah, I haven't either, but I know the premise.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
And that Sexual Assault Awareness Month is carried out by
in SVRC dot org, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
And also I know that we're doing a lot of
precursoring here, but there is one section here on what
to do if you've been sexually assaulted. Two dudes explaining this,

(03:19):
like just do this, Like we're not taking it that likely,
you know, Like we know that it is extremely difficult
to do anything much less like follow all the exact steps.
So many sexual assaults and rapes get unreported for a
thousand reasons. So we're not taking this lightly. But this

(03:40):
is our job, this is what we do, and this
is an important topic, so sure, please excuse two dudes
explaining a section on what to do when you're sexually assaulted.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
But I think that also raises another point that I
want to touch on to Chuck. Sexual assault doesn't just
happen to women. Sure, it happens to men.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
The trans community is also a big target for sexual assault, unfortunately.
So while it is largely women and from what I've
seen women between eighteen and thirty five, it hits all
demographics and targets across the spectrum of human beings, including men. Yeah,

(04:16):
so I wanted to say that as well.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
All right, now on with the show. So should we
do the history part first?

Speaker 3 (04:23):
I think I was thinking, so I think we should
say what a rape kit actually is.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Oh, that's something we always do wrong.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
We're doing it right though we've hit everything right so far.
I think I think a rape kit, and I'm so
sorry everybody to keep saying rape kit. They're also called
sexual assault evidence collection kits. You can understand why people
call them rape kits. But from here on out, maybe
we'll just try to say kit. Sure, they are really

(04:52):
simply a box. I saw a shoebox size, Ed says,
microwave oven size.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Just depends on the oven.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
A big old box. Yeah, and inside this box is
a all the stuff you need to collect the evidence
of a sexual assault.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, that a professional uses. It's not like a home thing.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
No, but it does include such thorough, step by step
directions that someone who's not specifically trained to do this
can can can carry out this kind of examination.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
I wonder one does this, Like, can you buy these
and perform this at home? Is you're too A thousand
reasons why you wouldn't go into a hospital.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
I think that you you can. You can buy them
from medical supply or law enforcement supply places. Both of
them sell kits, and they're actually relatively cheap. I saw
between five fifteen twenty five bucks, So yeah, you totally could.
It will still edit probably not. The defense would just
shoot holes in it all day long, and the jury

(05:56):
would be like, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Which they're already looking to do.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
Part of the of the process of collecting this evidence
and combining it all together to create this kit is
it begins a chain of custody. And if you do
it at home and then bring it in and they're
going to be like, come on.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Right, And there are a lot of problems with the
chain of custody that we're obviously going to cover as
well when you leave it to the professionals.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Right, it's just a big mess.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
But it is a big mess. But it's still more
often than not, it seems to be. It seems to
have been a good invention, sure, and that is a thing.
It is an invention, and it wasn't always around. It's
actually a relatively new invention. It wasn't until I think
nineteen seventy eight that the first ones actually came into
official use by the I believe the police department in

(06:45):
Chicago and then later on Illinois, which served as a
bit of a laboratory for it. And it was so
successful that within another year it sorted to spread around
the country.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, and just I mean it sounds like it's hard
to believe, but just collecting uh and having the tools
in a box and collecting the evidence and putting it
in a box for storage, just that alone coming around
went a long way toward helping victims be taken seriously.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, legitimizing rape and sexual assault.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, I mean, it's sad, but that's that's the case.
When they were first brought out, they were called vitulo kits,
in a lot of circles.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Be it t U, l l O and Louis or Lewis.
I never know.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
I'm thinking since season Chicago Lewis Louis.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
I thought you were going to say Louis because Chicago.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
I think it'd be I E. If it were in
Chicago Louis.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
All right, well we'll go with Lewis.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Let's just call him Chicago lou Chicago Loudulo. Now he
sounds like a mobster, Yeah, Chicago Louviadula.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
I think the vitula is really not helping.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
No, but he was not a mobster. He was actually
worked in the Chicago PDS forensic crime lab. He was
a sergeant and lieutenant who did not invent the rape kit,
but he was charged with sort of codifying it and
putting his stamp because he was one of the first
people in law enforcement that was trying to create a

(08:11):
standardized procedure.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, he was already a very well respected forensic investigator,
and so for him to say, hey, I'm a big
city forensic investigator, widely respected, and this thing is the bomb. Yeah,
this is a great invention. We should all start using it.
And here's how it really helped spread and give it
a boost early on. But even though they were called

(08:34):
Vitulo kits, it's not to say like he was like, yeah,
I invented this colin. I think he was just known
in the mind of other law enforcement agents that they
associated him in these kits. So that's what everybody else
called it. But really, if you want to nail down

(08:54):
an inventor of the rape kit, it was a woman
named Martha Marty Goddard.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, Goddard and Btula. I read some interviews with his grandkids,
and it's like a really proud legacy. They still get
letters from people from women. Goddard as she has unplugged,
Like I saw one interview with her where they talked
about and we're going to cover this heavily later. But
the the kit backlog, she didn't even know about it

(09:22):
because she's like no TV, no internet, no newspapers. She
really just sort of checked out right, and she was like,
that's really sad to hear about that.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
It is very sad. So I saw a quote somewhere
that I think is Betula's grandkids said that he would
be spinning as grave if you knew about this backlog,
which we'll get to later.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
So Goddard was a survivor of sexual assault and she
got together with some other victims.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Basically, the writing was.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
On the wall like that, you know, things weren't being
taken seriously in many police departments.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yes, she saw firsthand that like that, that they weren't
collecting evidence correctly, that they weren't they weren't taking it seriously,
which is still a huge problem, and she's she decided
to do something about it.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
Well, the first questions, and still in a lot of areas,
probably the first questions still are like, well, what was
the situation, And if it starts with well I met
a guy at a bar, then you're sort of discounted,
like out of the gate.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Very sad and very unfair.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
But she formed a group called Citizens for Victims Assistants
in the nineteen seventies and went to work. Like she said,
she was doing sixteen hour days visiting hospitals, talking to cops,
going to police stations, lawyers, judges, basically learning and working
on everyone she could about how to get a better

(10:44):
system going. But she needed money and she got that from,
of all places, the Playboy Foundation.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah, Hugh Hefner's foundation, his daughter Christy was friends with
Marty Goddard, and I think Playboy gave her ten which
is equal to about forty two grand in today's money. Yeah,
and that was enough to go start assembling these kits
because one of the points from the outset of these
kits was that they be inexpensive because hospital they wanted

(11:15):
to remove as many barriers as possible for hospitals to
start implementing very smart widely. And one really easy way
to do it was to say, here, these are virtually free,
or in some cases, these are free because this community
group raised a bunch of money to purchase the implements
of these kits, put them all together, and now here
you just use them, that's all.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Which is a success story in and of itself when
you know how like big Farmer works in the medical
community in America, Like I could have seen this being like, well,
these swabs and envelopes and combs, this will be seven
thousand dollars right per kit. Yeah, it's because we put
it all on a box for you.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Marty godd had gotten the way of that from the
outset and still to this day. I mean, that's why
they're not any more than five to twenty five dollars year,
even from like a medical supplier.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, amazing.

Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah, she's a hashtag hero.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Are we doing that now? Uh huh? Hashtag in it? Yeah,
relate to the game, my friend as always.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Have you heard about this hashtag thing? Sure, you got
to go keep your two fingers on each hand hashtag Okay.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
See, I knew you'd get a funny in there.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
So they were developed before DNA evidence was even around.
So this was back when it was just like hair
and fiber fingernails, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Still very valuable.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
And I think one of the kits that's sort of
common these days is what's known as the Southwestern Sexual
Assault Evidence Collection Kit.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
It's like the gold standard, I guess so.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
And it's called the Southwestern Obviously it was in Texas.
The Attorney General's office there in nineteen ninety eight kind
of created this one. And that's sort of, like you said,
the one that people look to or base theirs on.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, because I mean there they took the groundwork that
Marty Goddard came up with, going from to all of
what you'd call in the corporate world and buzz speak,
all the stakeholders in the process of apprehending and convicting
people who are who sexually assault other people, you know,
scumbags you can say, monsters, Yeah, monsters. And she figured

(13:23):
out exactly how to put this together and laid the groundwork.
And then from what I understand, in the late nineties,
the Texas the Texas Attorney General's office said let's let's
let's purifize us. Let's let's make it even better, like
using what we know. And then that's what's in use
largely today. Although you're going to find different kids, there's
no there's no actual centre. Its a de facto standard, right.

(13:46):
And and in the same point, different hospitals you go to,
even in the same state, are going to follow slightly
different procedures. They might use slightly different kits. But some
some states have said, no, this is important enough, like
here's how you do this. Here is the law of
how you conduct a rape kit examination.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
And so Goddard and Viatullo, you know, his stamp of approval,
her working hard to get these things, you know, built
from the ground up. The work that they did together
was like really set the standard in the late seventies
for this across the country, just becoming just more a
more normalized way to collect evidence and take it more seriously.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Right, it was a big, big deal, big one.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, not just literally having you know, all of the
implements you need to conduct this investigation, but just the
very presence of these sexual assault evidence collection hits, the
fact that they exist, says law enforcements, saying, Okay, yeah,
this is a bigger deal than we've been treating it. Right,
you want to take a break, Yeah, let's do it.
We're going to take a break everybody. I don't know

(14:50):
if you just heard, but won't be right back. It's stuffish,

(15:19):
all right, chuck. So the very reason that these kids
exist is because sexual assault is a very unique kind
of crime in that the victim, the body of the victim,
is a crime scene, a walking, talking crime scene. I mean,
like if you're murdered or something, and like your body

(15:40):
is dumped somewhere, your body is still a crime scene,
but you're walking around, moving. You can actually contaminate the
very crime scene from your assault just by doing things
that any normal human being would want to do after
being sexually assaulted. It's, in that sense, a very unique
kind of kind of crime scene. And that's what sexual

(16:02):
assault evidence collection kids are for is to step by step,
methodically systematically collect that evidence and preserve it so that
it can later be analyzed and using court.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, so these are the recommended steps if you've been
a victim. And like I said, there are a thousand
reasons that you would not want to do any and
all of these things, and we totally get that. But
and I think Ed puts it in a really good
way in this article. He said, to receive the best
possible care just medically for yourself and to have the

(16:37):
best chances of collecting good evidence, it needs to be
within a twenty four hour window ideally critical.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
The twenty four is critical, and then apparently up to
three days it's still viable. But after three days most
experts like it's not going to get any as.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Far as DNA, which is the real, you know, really
what you're looking for. You will be very upset, and
you may be in literal shock, You may have had
one or more panic attacks. All of these things make
it very difficult to carry out like logical steps. But
experts say that the first thing you want to do,

(17:12):
obviously is get some more safe as soon as you
can get away. If your attacker is around, and try
and find someone you know an advocate for you, whether
it's a friend or a family member who can kind
of be with you in the first you know, hours
after this this horrific event has happened, go to the

(17:33):
emergency room, even if you're not injured quote unquote physically,
like you really should go to the emergency room as
soon as you can.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
This is a big one, not just because the emergency
room is where you're going to have this kid administered,
but also because it takes such tremendous reserve to draw
in such tremendous reserves to take yourself out of the
comfort and safety of your home, which is probably where
you went to not take a shower, which is another

(18:06):
huge step too. And to just say I'm going to
go to the emergency room and undergo this procedure and
let a bunch of strangers poke them probably and tell
them about what just happened. That's the ideal of what
you're supposed to do. But if you look at it
in that respect, that's just such a that's such a
huge thing on top of what just happened, that that

(18:27):
this is required of you to catch the person who
just did it I mean from a from a bystanders perspective,
it just makes you want to catch them even more.
You know that that's on top of the assault as well.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yeah, because it's not like the trauma is over for you,
right and anyway it may never be. But go to
the er as soon as you can if it's not right,
if you if you go to sleep and wake up
the next day, you can go to the emergency room then,
like it's just important that you go whenever you feel
like you can do so. And like you said, it's

(19:01):
probably the least intuitive thing you could imagine to not
want to shower and bathe yourself, but that that gets
rid of a lot of evidence, so's it's terrible.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
But they say please do not shower. Yeah, they say please.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
Please the capital P.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
If you you should keep the clothes you're wearing on
if you can. If understandably you can't or don't want
to save them, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
Put them in a bag and take them to the
er with you.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, if you have the wherewithal to change clothes. And
this is something that they will have you do in
the hospital, have you stand over like like butcher paper
or maybe even a towel. If you have the wherewithal
to do that wherever you are, whether it's at home
or in a hotel or someplace. Put that in there too,
because when you're changing your clothes, that's when you know

(19:57):
DNA evidence can can fall out, whether it's a hair
or whatever, and in particles. Right, just collect everything you
can and put it in a bag. Certainly, do not
wash those clothes, and then take those with you to.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
The emergency room.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, and then the last thing you should know, just
because you're going to an emergency room, and even if
you are tested with this forensic kit, you're not required
to file a police report.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Ever.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
That's a big one, but.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Especially right away, it's not like they're going to have
a cop in there grilling you. You can file this
police report whenever you want to.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, If you are not comfortable filing a police report
right then you can do what's called a Jane Doe
or imagine a John Doe examination, where they just go
through all the steps and collect all the evidence, but
you never see a cop. They don't call the police
until after you've left. So that's a big one for
a lot of people. Sure, the ED points out though

(20:54):
in some states there is still a statute of limitations
of between ten and twenty one years, although some states
have removed the statute of limitations for a felony sexual assault.
But there can be a clock ticking. But we're talking
ten years at the least, right, Yeah, for sure. So yeah,
you don't have to. This isn't something you have to

(21:16):
knock out that day if you don't want to, if
you're not ready to. When you go to the er
for this kind of examination, you are signing up for
a few hours. It's going to take a few hours.
It's not a quick procedure. And there's something else that
you should know that I really hope won't discourage you,

(21:36):
but you should go into it knowing it is a
it's an invasive procedure. They have to collect evidence from
everywhere that the guy who did this to you, the
person who did this to you was, And they're also
going to ask you they're going to take an oral
history and they're going to ask you to basically recount
the worst thing that's ever happened to you within twenty

(21:58):
four hours after it happened. And then they're going to
go over all of the spots with things like swabs
and tweezers and combs and things like that to collect
this evidence. And it's going to take a while, but
you should expect to be treated very gently and with
a tremendous amount of respect from the people who are
going to administer this examination. And I would guess to

(22:21):
a hospital there will be counselors available there to be
there with you if you don't have like a friend
or a family member there with.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
You or anything.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah, in rural areas are where they still need to
do a lot of catch up work in hospitals and
things like that. But if you're in any major city,
there will almost one hundred percent chance that you'll have
what's called a sexual assault nurse examiner on staff. This
is a nurse who has received extra training on how
to administer this exam. Like we said before, like any

(22:52):
nurse can do this and do a great job. But
if you have a sa AY a sane trained person
on staff, then that's who you'll be seeing. And you know,
like I said, in rural areas, they're just it's just
tough to staff up for things like this, so they're
still doing all they can to get grant money and
stuff like that to get these people trained up.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, it's just a question of extra funding. Because if
you give a hospital funding that's set aside for sane nurses,
you just created a new position in a hospital that
wasn't there before. You've given the nursing staff there an
incentive to go further their education, invest in their education
so that they can have this better job in the
same hospital and help people as well. So it's really

(23:34):
just a question of funding. Yeah, that's it, you know.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
I mean a lot of this stuff sadly is question
of funding. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
Luckily there is enough agitation at the bottom up that,
like the pocketbooks have kind of loosened up over recent years, right,
it is. It is something that hasn't been it's been
as the result of agitation and bad press, right right,
and you know the right thing to do.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, for sure. Consent is a big part of all
the entire procedure. They're going to ask you basically before everything, like, hey,
I have a speculum here, we need to do a
vaginal exam. Is that okay with you? And you can
say no to any and all of this stuff. This
is all up to you, yeah, on how you want

(24:22):
to proceed with this.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
And they're going to ask for your consent for the
whole procedure first, and then step by step before each
step they're going to ask for your consent as well,
and they're going to explain what's coming up, like you said.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, and as far as the interview portion, this is
really important stuff as far as what will eventually wind
up with investigators and the questions about like were you
on drugs or had you been drinking? Like this isn't
to set you up for future, you know, grilling by
a prosecutor necessarily, but like if you you may have

(24:57):
been drugged or you may have had a drink, biked
or something like that. Right, So all of this is
like just super super important.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
So they need to know. They need to say, hey,
future lab tech test for roof and all or something
like that. Whatever if that if you were in a
bar and you suddenly woke up on the side of
the road, right, if that's the kind of history they're
taking for you for those reasons, not not you know,
what were you doing in a bar by yourself? Yeah, yeah,

(25:25):
that's not what this is. Again, this is not a
detective asking you or performing this exam. They might not
even be aware of your case. Yet this is a
trained nurse or at the very least a registered nurse
who is performing this with one would expect a tremendous
amount of like compassion and respectfulness.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
Absolutely, you're going to be giving blood and urine samples.
This is super important to provide a DNA baseline. They
will pluck cares from your scalp, they will swab your mouth,
they will use a comb to collect pubic care. There
will be you know, we already mentioned a genital exam,

(26:07):
whether it's vaginal or anal. They really, like you said,
they just they have to go over with a sort
of a fine tooth comb everywhere where the assault happened.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
Yeah, so they're going to ask you awful questions like
where you penetrated anally, was an object used? Did the
perpetrator lick you or kiss you or anything like that? Right,
And depending on these questions, they're going to investigate further.
But they're they're going to follow certain steps that no
matter what. But then if you say, yes, the guy

(26:41):
licked my face on my left cheek, there's going to
be a swab on your left cheek that they otherwise
may not have included in the normal steps.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah, and again this is like, I mean, I can't
imagine having to relift something like this, And they're.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
Right within like twenty four hours, ideally twenty four hours
after it happened, like the worst thing that happened to
you in your life. Let's talk about it here, point
to where it happened. Yeah, you know, from a stranger.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Well, and there are plenty of interviews that that we
both read where you know, women said it was it
was reliving it and I felt like I was being
even with a great caregiven, like I was being assaulted
all over again. It's just so important to try and
try and do if you can, if you can get there.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
If you can't, there's no blame, there's no judgment, like
it's that's a that's a normal reaction. This is a
lot to ask from somebody, but this is what it
takes to to collect the evidence and preserve it in
a way that you can catch the person who did this.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah, they're going to test for well, it's not required
actually to test for STDs, but they will ask you
about STDs, I would imagine ask if you want to
be tested.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
They will offer emergency contraception as well, and you're not
going to be charged for that procedure or the kit.
Here's the thing go or you shouldn't be.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
No, you won't be not for the not for the
administration of the kits. Which is that's great, that's substantial.
I mean it's a sixteen dollars kit. But this is
also four or five hours of an er nurse's potentially
a highly trained er nurse's time. So that's great, they're
not charging you. But what's what's a shame what's shameful,
I should say, is that you will still be charged

(28:25):
for any treatment of injuries. Say like you, we were
hit and you need to be treated with like stitches
or whatever. You'll get a bill for stitches. If you say, yes,
I do want anti viral drugs because I'm afraid of
having contracted an STD, or I do want emergency contraception,
They'll say here's your prescription, and the pharmacist will charge

(28:45):
you for that. That's not okay. As a society, we
should not ask rape and sexual assault victims to pay
for their own medical treatment directly coming from a rape
or a sexual assault. We should bear that burden ourselves,
and then it should give us that even slighter additional
incentive to go get the guy who did it right,

(29:07):
you know what I mean? We should nobody should pay
a cent. And then even worse than that, I'm sorry,
I realize I'm standing on a pretty big soapbox right now,
but worse than that, Chuck. Prior to the Affordable Care Act,
you could not you It was possible that you would
be denied future healthcare coverage insurance if you were the

(29:29):
victim of a sexual assault or rape who went to
go get treatment because they treated it as a pre
existing condition. Unbelievable, a pre existing condition was rape? Can
you believe that?

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Sadly, I can stepped down.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
They're gonna take this kit, They're gonna seal everything up,
they're gonna store it. Everything is like, you know, all
the clothing and everything and all the swabs are dried
out and labeled, and then it's sealed back in that
original box as part of the I guess the genius
of this kit was that every thing that comes out

(30:07):
of it goes right back in, and it is also
the storage device right where it's you know, labeled, and
then it's all shipped to local law enforcement and then
it's stored quite possibly till the end of time, sadly yeah,
or destroyed. We'll get to both of those things.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
And ideally, and under just about any procedure, every single
person who takes custody of that is supposed to sign
the label on the outside of the box, so there's
a clear chain of custody, and it goes from the
er nurse to the cops, to the prosecutors, to the
lab to the prosecutors and so on. But there's supposed

(30:47):
to be a clear chain of custody so that there's
no questions about whether it was tampered with or anything.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
I always that's the one thing that weirds me out
about any kind of blood sample I'm ever asked to give,
or any kind procedure I'm ever tested for, is when
I see them take my blood or whatever specimen and
they're writing on the little thing and it leaves the room.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
I don't know why.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
My first thought is always like, well, they're going to
mix that up with somebody, which.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Is not true.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
But I'm always just like, all right, well it's out
of my vision, so I don't trust it.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
I don't know what that is. It probably stems from
having been switched at birth, in the hospital. That's the
only explanation.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
All Right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna
come back and talk after this about the horrific problem
of rape kit backlog and destruction right after this. Tough.

(32:02):
All right, So we told you the history of the kit,
how it works, your ideal scenario for what you should
do if you're ever a victim, and the great ending
to this story would be is and then those kits
go off and they all get tested and they have
great conviction rates and.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
H rate so long rate.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Sadly that is not the case, and this is all
over the news for years now, as it should be.
But well, first of all, this is what happens in
the ideal scenario. They do store this, it is tested
in a DNA lab and then it's checked against the
CODIS the c O d I S, the Combined DNA
Index system, that's the database from the FBI of DNA

(32:51):
profiles of bad people.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
And if there a hit comes up, then.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
You have a pretty good chance then of finding this person.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
The other thing about COTIS is this, when you submit
a sample a DNA sample, the codis from a crime
like a sexual assault, and there's not a hit that sample.
You know, you just go okay, sorry, Cotis, can I
have my sample back? Like that sample stays there, and
so future detective to say they have a suspect or
somebody who comes in and as a matter of routine,
they run the suspect's DNA, which I think like just

(33:23):
a matter of course. Now, when you're charged with a crime,
they swab your cheek and then run it through cotis.
That DNA may be hit and all of a sudden,
this thing like you got caught robbing somebody's house, but
now you're up for a rape charge from two years
ago because your DNA was entered through this rape kit.
So even if you don't get a hit, that doesn't
mean that there's not going to be a conviction. That's

(33:44):
not like the rape kit was all for naught.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yeah, yeah, you know, for sure. Sadly, that's not the
way it always works. In the two thousands, there started
to be some there were some reporters digging around, found
a story and found out that there are tens of
thousands of rape kits all over the country sitting in
warehouses and sitting on shelves for years and years and

(34:08):
years untested.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
It was so bad, Chuck, that they became known as
the backlog, right, yeah, like some dating back to the
nineties where they just, like you said, sitting in warehouses untested.
And at first when I think some reporters started digging
this up and found out like, whoa, this is not okay,
how widespread is this and started looking around and found

(34:30):
it's like everywhere, and some towns are worse than others,
Like Akron, Ohio had something like three thousand, I think.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Two thousand kits in Akron, Ohio alone.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
So Detroit had. Sorry, Akrony, I didn't mean to put
more on you than you had. I was confusing you
with Phoenix. Phoenix had three thousand kits, Dallas had four thousand,
Memphis has twelve thousand, and in Detroit a few years back,
somebody wandered into a police storage facility and was like, oh,
there's a seven thousand untested rape kits that have just

(35:03):
been that we just forgot we had. Here's the problem
with that. There's a couple of problems with it. But
the first one, Chuck, is that every single one of
those kits represents a person who found the wherewithal to
drag himself for herself to the er and go through
this hour's long procedure and suffer a second violation basically

(35:27):
is what it feels like. In order to give the
cops the evidence that they need, and the cops didn't
even bother to send it to the lab. That is
a third violation.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
And the other problem is that this could be like,
while they're sitting in there, and this often, sadly is
the case, is that these people commit more sexual assaults.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
Yep, so they could be behind bars.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
Yeah. In Detroit, So there was eleven thousand untested kits
they found. Let's say that each one was a different
and perpetrator. The recidativism, that's a bone head word. The
recidativism rate they think for sexual offenders of sexual assault
is between five and thirty two percent over a fifteen

(36:14):
year period. So if those kits sat there untested for
fifteen years, that means that an additional five hundred and
fifty to thirty five hundred and twenty rapes were carried
out by the same people whose DNA was in those
kits untested.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
Yeah, So that's unacceptable, right, And as a result, Congress
was like, here's one hundred and fifty million dollars to
get rid of this backlog.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
That should solve it.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
It did. It helped a lot, right, It got the
labs going and everything like that.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Right.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
The problem is is it funded labs. That's what everybody
said was, well, the labs are overworked, what are you
going to do? So they got more technicians, they got
more labs, and the backlog got worked through. In a
lot of cases in Detroit in particular, the prosecutor, one
of the prosecutors there named Kim Worthy, who's another hashtag
hero of this story, has been like, this number is

(37:08):
going down. We're going through those kits and it's systematically
and methodically.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
It's what it takes.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
It takes someone or a body of people, like specific
not just like throwing money at something, but like specifically
following up on the ground.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Right. Okay, so the funding went toward the labs, right,
But that left another half of this formula, which is
a big one.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
The cops. Right.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
So this backlog got moved through the labs, but that
doesn't mean that the cops followed up on the results,
and including cases where there were hits in Codis. Later
research by reporters found that like a lot of these
cases in the backlog that got worked through hadn't been
followed up on. Yeah, which is another problem.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, there have been some federal guidelines laid down since then,
specifically the Safer Act of twenty thirteen Sexual Assault Forensic
Evidence Reporting. Different states have new laws in place, Like
in New York State it is law now that requires
kits to be sent in within ten days of collection
and tested by the lab within three months, and they

(38:08):
set up a timeline for processing backlog kits. But it's
you know, it still depends on what city you live
in and what state you live in, because it still happens.
It still happens a lot. It says here in twenty
eleven report from the National Institute of Justice, eighteen percent

(38:29):
of all unsolved rapes between two thousand and two and
two thousand and seven involved this kind of evidence that
had never been processed, right, eighteen percent, yep.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
And so in the cops defense here there they're basically
saying most of them are saying, Okay, so great, that
was great. You guys funded the lab. We are still
overworked and understaffed and.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Out of room, out of room literally to store these kits.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
So here is another thing, right, So all this stuff went,
all this focus went on the backlog. As a matter
of fact, the third hashtag hero from this story is
Mariska Hargeta from Law and Order SVU. Yeah, just from
doing Law and Order SVU. Her eyes were so open
to this whole backlog problem that she started a foundation
called the Joyful Heart Foundation that is basically dedicated to

(39:17):
getting rid of the rape kit backlog.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Well actually that's a larger foundation, but within that is
in the backlog dot org. And here's what you can
do everyone, since it is a national awareness month.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
First, put on something teal.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
Put on something Teal on April.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Second, go to end the backlog dot org and click
on take action and there are a number of things
you can do. But at the bottom there's a donation button,
and donate. I set up a monthly today that as
far as I'm concerned, I'll donate monthly till the day
I die, sure, which hopefully is a long time.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Long long time hashtag long time.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
Yeah, But just go to end backlog dot org.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
If you don't have money to give, there are other
things you can do under the take action banner.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
For sure, yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
So back in twenty sixteen, while everybody was talking about
the backlog, worrying about the backlog, doing something about the backlog,
the Fayevel, North Carolina, Chief of Police held a press
conference and said, Hey, the city attorneys told me not

(40:18):
to do this, but I feel morally a moral responsibility
to tell the public this. But we destroyed about three
hundred untested rape kits in cases where the statute of
limitations hadn't run out.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yeah, this isn't sitting on a shelf, this isn't untested,
this is we threw them away.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
They were incinerated. That evidence has gone forever and it
was never sent off to a lab and the statute
of limitations was not up in these cases. And that
was huge. That was a big, a big deal. And
he committed his town as police department to going through
all those cases, contacting the victims and see if they

(41:00):
could still build a case for all them. They made
it a priority. But it opened Pandora's box around the country,
and CNN got a speculum of their own and started
crawling around law enforcement agencies all over the country and saying, Hey,
have you guys ever done that? Have you ever destroyed
rape kits? What's your policy for that? When's the last

(41:21):
time you did it? Were any of them still within
the statute of limitations and they found out that it
happens a lot. Actually, like a lot police to make
room in evidence rooms, they will destroy rape kits. Some
of them have official policies in place. Some of them
is just a detective deciding that the case isn't going

(41:44):
anywhere and we'll say, yeah, you can destroy that rape kit.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
Sometimes it's a misunderstanding of what the statutal limitations is.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
Yes, but these kits have never gone on, have have
never been tested, and never will be tested. That evidence
has gone forever, and that is even worse than the backlog.
Everyone is concluded, and I think rightfully.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
So yeah, this and like you mentioned earlier, just having
this stuff entered into cotis is huge because let's say
you do nab someone and it turns out that they
it comes up with like six hits from sexual assaults.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Over the years, like.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
I mean prison sentences aside. The value that that has
for a victim to know that that person was caught
and is finally going to pay for their crime is
can't be measured, you know.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Right, and also like, if you go through this procedure
and you still don't get a hit in CODIS, but
that DNA evidence is in codis. This if this perpetrator
gets caught down the line, you've contributed to a much
stronger conviction against them and probably a bigger sentence because
you've helped establish a pattern of criminal behavior.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
And in fact, that's how they call the Golden State
killer I believe is from this backlog of rape kits
being put through. Guy popped up. I think they got
him for like twelve or thirteen rapes during his serial
killer career through this backlog being moved through, and that
opportunity is lost if you just destroy this evidence untested. Secondly,

(43:15):
it also gives it ruins any opportunity for a wrongfully
convicted person who's convicted previously before DNA evidence was used.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah, I mean that's happened a lot.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Yeah, if you destroy this evidence, it may it removes
that possibility as well. So I think the Justice Department
issued some guidelines that say you should hold rape kit
evidence for a minimum of fifty years or the statute
of Limitations, whichever comes first. And then that's that. And

(43:50):
everybody said that's really great, but we really only legally
have to listen to our states guidelines, which are all
over the place.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Yeah, I wonder if any kind of like penalty and
accountability would help.

Speaker 3 (44:00):
Well, I think CNN, like crawling up everybody's butt is helping. Sure, Sure,
I think it's kind of opened some people's eyes. And
that was the same thing that brought so much attention
to the backlog, so hopefully the same attention will come
to this too. And yeah, we can start funding police
departments around the country to like carry the carry out
the legwork on.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Yes, I just have one more thing.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
If you just and I imagine you could do this
in any given week or day now, if you just
type in rape kit and hit news on your search engine,
many articles will come up like that day of cases
like this. Just today there was one Austin Police Department
could potentially reopen dozens of rape investigations after getting a

(44:42):
backlog results from a backlog of twenty almost twenty seven
hundred untested kits. I believe they got a grant from.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
New York.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
I'm not sure how that happened, but they got like
a million bucks from a grant from Manhattan to Austin, Texas.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
Like, we got a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
You want some of it Austin maybe, but that allowed
them to test like almost twenty seven hundred kits. Another
story at Tucson man was convicted of raping seven women
over a twelve year period after police received a grant
to test rape kits and it said in a changed
mindset over which kits get tested. And then Orlando, Florida

(45:24):
man is now in jail today. He fled the state
and found him in Puerto Rico. And once again, this
was a long unsolved rape case that they know. They
finally cracked up in that kit, tested it and bammed.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
This guy comes up. Wow, and they got him in
Puerto Rico.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
Yep, still a territory, dufus. If you want to know
more about rape kits, just do what Chuck said and
search it on your favorite search engines news.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Okay, yeah, go to indth backlog dot org for sure.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
Even better, just poke around there for a while and
put on.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
Something to you. Yes, And in the meantime, it's time
for listener mail.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
I don't think I have anything.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
Teal, you can borrow the sweatshirt. Okay, it's mint, but
it's awfully close.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yeah, I'm not good with my colors. Emily thinks I'm
partially color blind. I think you might be too, might be.
So I'm going to call this ASMR. We've been getting
a lot of follow up on this from people that
get that tingly feeling and people like me that throw
up in their mouth a little bit. Hey, guys, been
listening for a long time. I'm always intrigued by the topics.

(46:30):
I'm a crafter, and your show always keeps my mind moving,
so my creativity can flow in the background.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Nice, I assure it.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
That's the ideal situation crafting.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah, I seriously thought I was the only person who
experienced ASMR. The friends I've talked to about it in
the past thing, I'm crazy. No one around here knows
anything about it. I love the feeling I get when
I can activate the sensation. The best way I describe
it is like for me getting goosebumps inside my skull.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
Pretty good.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
That's a great one.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
I wish I knew what that felt like.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
Yeah, I do too.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
You know, I envy that I want this sensation.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
I don't have it.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
The first time I found something that triggered it, I
was working in a small office in the basement of
a hospital. It was getting repainted, and the sound of
the paint roller and the people near me and the
office set it off. First, I thought it was strange,
but I really enjoyed it as our office started to
grow up again. Wearing headphones on a regular basis and
listened to the entire collection of Bob Ross painting, which

(47:29):
I famously or not famously, but I go to sleep
to that sometimes on Netflix.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
So you're not you don't have a problem with Bob Ross.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
Oh no, I love it, Okay, very soothing to me.
But I don't think I mean, I don't think he's ASMR.
Is he?

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Yeah, yeah, he's We didn't say that in the episode.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
I didn't think.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
So.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
Yeah, he's like a legendary ASMR trigger for some people. Legendary,
all right.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
I listened to the entire collection and found the soft
sound of his voice in stiff bristles on the canvas
caused the same reaction. Helped me lately with my anxiety
and general stress in the office. Actually, I even created
a playlist of people painting. I would listen to it
when I was stuck in traffic as I'm writing I'm
listening to your episode, and yes, swallowing sounds can give
me the tingles too. Bob Ross swallows a lot when

(48:15):
he's painting, and his mic is on his collar.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
I'm exciting, guys.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
What the the swallowing? Yeah, you might have to have
headphones on for that. Okay, I'm so excited, guys. You
have changed my life. Thanks so much. Goosebump headed. Candice
h Tali or Katali.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
Is uh in there?

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Yeah, that's that might be her her surtin name. Yeah,
bearinmermaid art dot com. Nice, I'm gonna shout out your
craft site. It's like jewelry and things. It's not barn
Mermaid art that I could see. It's just a whimsical name.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Gotcha.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Yeah, There's like it's something about painting like slows people down.
Like when you're painting and you're talking, you're just that
much calmer.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
No one paints fast.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
There's this dude like if like some some artists will paint,
do Instagram live and paint. Yeah. And I don't know
if you remember him or not, but the Gregory Jacobson.
He was the artist who came backstage at our Chicago
show last time. Yea yeah, okay. He did this for
years or for a year he had like some show
coming and he would just sit there and paint, and

(49:27):
you started watching him originally, and then she got me
into it and it was just him painting. He wasn't
even in the shot. Normally, it's just his hand painting,
but he'd be talking about what he's doing and maybe
answering some questions. And I never really thought about it before,
but it is like super laid back. Something about painting
makes you slow, just slows you down. Well, you know,

(49:48):
you swallow loudly.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
You never hear from a painter an artist. It's like, hurry,
you got to go knock this painting out right.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
Let me put some some players on there.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
Or maybe I don't know. I guess you could be
under a deadline.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
And he was under a deadline farmer. He had some
huge show coming up, and I guess then he decided, well,
I think I'll add this extra complication to this, to
this crazy deadline. But yeah, it was interesting. Thanks a lot,
Candice Nay. If you want to get in touch with us,
you can go to our website stuff you should Know
dot com and you can send us a good old

(50:21):
fashioned email to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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