The Maryland Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) is a coordinated response to submit untested rape kits for forensic testing. Under SAKI, many agencies in the state have worked together to test eligible rape kits for potential DNA evidence, conduct victim notification and provide support services, investigate more sexual assaults, and prosecute cases in an effort to support victims and seek justice for these crimes. Maryland’s past policies on testing sexual assault evidence kits (SAEKs), commonly known as rape kits, were inadequate. Thousands of kits had not been tested and survivors often faced uncertainty of the outcome of their sexual assault evidence kit and associated law enforcement investigations.
1. Tell us about the SAKI’s current efforts in Maryland.
The Maryland SAKI project is working to eliminate the backlog of thousands of untested and unsubmitted rape kits by sending those kits to forensic laboratories for DNA testing. Law enforcement agencies are responsible for reviewing each case, submitting eligible kits for DNA testing, and reopening investigations when appropriate. Law enforcement is also responsible for referring cases to the local State’s Attorney’s Office to determine if the case will be prosecuted. Trauma-informed victim advocates at the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault (MCASA) notify the survivors in these cases about the status of their rape kit and offer support and resources, including referrals to local rape crisis centers for counseling and therapy, and to MCASA’s Sexual Assault Legal Institute (SALI) for legal services.
2. What makes SAKI important to Maryland survivors?
Every rape kit belongs to a sexual assault survivor that underwent an invasive forensic medical exam in the hopes that evidence collected from their body could be used to pursue justice. Every untested rape kit represents a survivor that the system failed. Although this forensic testing through the Maryland SAKI project is long overdue, it provides survivors with a renewed opportunity to obtain justice, closure, and validation. Survivors receive new information about their kit through victim notification and Maryland aims to provide all survivors with the opportunity to receive this new information through a “notify all” approach. This means that MCASA advocates attempt to contact all survivors with a previously untested rape kits, regardless of the presence of DNA or investigative and prosecutorial decision.
One survivor said the following about the notification process:
There is no way to describe how much SAKI has helped me and is still helping me! I thought it was just an alert system…but I stumbled onto the most helpful, resourceful, and responsive person/organization that I have encountered since my rape.
3. Can you talk about some of SAKI's accomplishments or successes?
Since 2019, over 1,000 rape kits have been tested and MCASA has successfully contacted more than 500 survivors to provide them with new information about their kit. Our efforts to successfully notify every survivor continue. Many of these survivors have expressed appreciation for the work being done through the project and for the opportunity to connect with an advocate and support services through victim notification, providing them with an opportunity to heal that they did not have before. The Maryland SAKI project currently has some cases that are heading towards prosecution, and even though the outcomes are unknown at this point, MCASA is hopeful that justice will finally be achieved and offenders will be held accountable.
4. What are SAKI’s biggest challenges?
There are several challenges with revisiting these older sexual assault cases and conducting victim notifications. First and foremost, MCASA depends on law enforcement agencies to submit notification requests for each case. When law enforcement agencies do not collaborate with MCASA or submit cases for victim notification, survivors may be left without updates and information that they have the right to receive and without access to support and resources. Additionally, notification requests often include outdated contact information for survivors as law enforcement often provides the contact information that was listed in the report at the time of the sexual assault, which may date back 10, 20, or even 30 years. However, many survivors have since relocated, changed phone numbers, or changed their name. While some law enforcement agencies and other project partners help MCASA search for current contact information for survivors, which is critical to the initial notification done by phone, there are still survivors that the project has been unable to locate and MCASA’s funds for location services, which previously helped locate over 60 survivors, were eliminated by the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy.
Survivors that are hoping to receive information about or would like to inquire about the status of their kit can contact MCASA’s SAKI Opt-In Information Line at 833-364-0046 or by email at [email protected] to request information and provide their current contact information. Survivors that do not wish to be notified can also contact the opt-in information line to request that they not be contacted about their kit.
5. What does SAKI hope to achieve in the next few years?
While there has been progress in regards to rape kit policies and testing, there is still work that needs to be done to implement these policies. Progress has been far too slow.
The State recently estimated that about 20,000 kits will be entered into the tracking system. The survivors in these cases were sexually assaulted prior to the implementation of the tracking system, so they do not have any kit numbers or the information needed to find out about their kit. MCASA is advocating for the SAEK Committee to help create a plan to notify these survivors and hopes to ensure that these survivors have access to the trained victim notification advocates in the SAKI project.
Currently, some SAEK testing is taking a year or more. This is harmful to survivors and delays justice. We hope to see this change.
Finally, we hope to have an accurate inventory of the backlog, to see every eligible kit get tested, and to prevent backlogs in the future.
Maryland can and should do better to support survivors who have bravely sought exams to collect evidence and help protect themselves and our communities.
