(NewsNation) — They sat for decades on evidence room shelves in law enforcement buildings across North Carolina. Now, thanks to a bipartisan effort that began in 2018, nearly 16,000 untested sexual assault kits have been processed. And police across the Tarheel State have made arrests in what were cold cases.
“North Carolina has ended the backlog of untested rape kits,” state Attorney General Josh Stein announced Tuesday. “This milestone was six years in the making.”
Stein stood with police, lawmakers, victim advocates and sexual assault survivors to make the announcement. He credited two initiatives that made it happen. The North Carolina legislature passed the “Survivor Act” in 2019, and the U.S. Department of Justice supplied the initial funding.
The law included a new process for submitting kits to labs, and the money to process those kits. It also funding renovations to the state crime lab.
The law mandates that any medical facility producing a sexual assault kit must send it to law enforcement within 48 hours, and then to a testing lab within 45 days.
While the backlog may be clear for now, the effort to find justice for the victims, even those who’ve died, is far from over. Of the approximately 16,000 untested kits discovered:
- 11,841 met minimum evidence testing requirements
- Approximately 5,000 contained enough DNA to be entered into the database of convicted offenders
- About 2,700 samples matched someone in the database
- Authorities have made 114 arrests so far
Stein says that to ensure there won’t be another backlog, new sexual assault kits contain barcodes for tracking.
“We never want to be in a position again where victims have no idea where their kits are as they wait years and years and years.”