Rape Victim Takes Justice Plea to Senate

Debbie Smith was home in March of 1989 when a masked man abducted her, dragged her to nearby woods and repeatedly raped her.

"After he let me live I wished he killed me," Smith old CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian.

Today, on Capital Hill, Smith and other witnesses implored a Senate panel to eliminate the alarming backlog of untested rape kits nationwide.

"Each box holds within it vital evidence that is crucial to the safety of women everywhere," Smith said at the hearing.

Last month a CBS News investigation found more than 20,000 rape kits nationwide in major American cities that were never tested. An additional 6,000 were languishing in crime labs - waiting months, even years to be tested.

"We need to be figuring a way to get our local law enforcement up to where they need to be," Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama said.

Rape in America, Justice Denied
Watch: Many Rape Kits Go Untested
Rape Kit Data, By the Numbers
Untested Rape Kits Lead to More Crimes

"They solve homicides, they solve many, many rape cases," said Linda Fairstein, who led the Manhattan District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit for 26 years.

Fairstein spearheaded New York's decision to test every single rape kit. The result: an arrest rate for rape of 70 percent today -- nearly triple the national average.

"We need to find, identify, test, and get results on every rape kit that exists in this country," Fairstein said.

Several senators today called for strengthening a 2005 bill designed to reduce the backlog of rape kits that sit untested. It's a bill named after none other than Debbie Smith.

"Can you imagine going through an exam like what goes on in one of those things for nothing? To know that you were just traumatized again, for it to sit on a shelf, it's not fair," Smith said.

For Smith justice finally came with a DNA match of a prisoner in Virginia -- 6 1/2 years after her attack. Justice is still missing for thousands of other women across the country.

[k_raven]

It would seem that the original commenttator went off on a rant and got off track...The issue is rapists getting away with rape. I know how this feels, I was raped on June 13th of 2009 and because Illinois
Crime lab has not processed the DNA evidence the perp in question has not even been arrested to date. He has gone on to commit two more crimes and not being protected has destroyed my life. I became suicidal after running into the perp several times and tried to end my life on October 28 this year I drank Anti-freeze and survived with no damaging effects to my body. Now I realize I must be here to see him go to prison!!! Illinois is a state where criminals go free and victims are imprisoned by fear... Thank you for letting the public here your story and bringing light to victims dark suffering.

[tmittelstaed]

I really hate this kind of sloppy reporting. Rape kits aren't "tested". Testing implies that you have a bunch of criminal DNA on file already and your "testing" is going to result in a match. Rape kit "testing" is the process of entering the data from the DNA sample into the FBI DNA database. Sometimes you get lucky and there's a match. Most of the time you spend the effort to do this and there's not a match - and there may never be, because there will only be a match if the perp's DNA is taken and entered into the database.

So Debbie's rape kit got tested 6.5 years after it was taken. How do we know that the DNA sample of the prisoner that matched this was even on file when she was raped? Maybe the truth here is that Debbie's rape kit WAS tested and put on file right away - and it wasn't until 6.5 years later that her attacker's DNA sample was entered into the database?

They only began forcing prisoners to yield up DNA samples for the FBI database relatively recently.

The issue here is a lot of this depends on your view of rape. If you are of the opinion that the vast majority of rapists only do rape once or twice, then you could test every victim's rape kit immediately and all that would happen is you would get 20,000 more victim entrys in the database and only a handful of convictions out of them - because the majority of rapists wouldn't have DNA samples on file because they wouldn't be in jail.

However if your opinion on rape is that there's only a handful of rapists out there doing most of the rapes, then it would follow that whenever one of these people was caught and a DNA sample was taken, that it would result in hundreds of convictions - assuming the victim rape kits are on file in the database.

Now, it's great that New York got the money to do a duck-hunt and get through their backlog. And 70% may seem like a lot but that only means that if there were 10 rapes in NY that 7 of them resulted in arrests - but it might have taken 1 million dollars to enter a backlog of 6,000 rape kits into the database - just to catch 3 more people than you would have caught if you never spent the money to work through the backlog. Without the actual numbers we don't know how much this cost, and can't make any judgement on whether it was a good idea or not. Maybe spending that money on more police might have resulted in more time spent investigating every crime scene, and might have resulted in 200 more criminals caught "the old fashioned way"

Unfortunately the problem here is that the general public really has no understanding of how to properly manage crime. So we have a lot of violent crime right now. Why is that? Well, the economy is probably the single biggest reason. It's not untrue to say that the economic downturn has caused many thousands more violent crimes, as more people under financial pressure of lost jobs, homes, wages, etc. snap and vent their frustrations by beating up family members, or breaking into houses, or sticking up liquor stores for cash.

Now, consider if the feds had slipped just a few million dollars into beefing up the SEC enforcement arm back in 2003. We might have caught the Bernie Madoffs then, and shut down the security derivitave trading schemes (which were after all nothing more than quasi-legal ponzi schemes) which initated the economic collapse. Whala - no recession or just a mild one. A dollar of prevention here is worth a thousand dollars of cure.

[gramto8]

So Debbie's rape kit got tested 6.5 years after it was taken. How do we know that the DNA sample of the prisoner that matched this was even on file when she was raped? Maybe the truth here is that Debbie's rape kit WAS tested and put on file right away - and it wasn't until 6.5 years later that her attacker's DNA sample was entered into the database? by tmittelstaed December 16, 2009 4:17 AM EST
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Even if your scenario is correct, it would increase the number/percentage of the rape offenders that are caught and (hopefully) prosecuted. Having the information in the system would give an idea of where the rapist was at the time of the original rape. It could help identify the rapist even faster by being able to know the history.

[gramto8]

However if your opinion on rape is that there's only a handful of rapists out there doing most of the rapes, then it would follow that whenever one of these people was caught and a DNA sample was taken, that it would result in hundreds of convictions - assuming the victim rape kits are on file in the database.
tmittelstaed December 16, 2009 4:17 AM EST
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Having even ONE rapist taken off the streets is worth it!! Don't know if you are male or female, but evidently you have never gone through the trauma of a rape... Believe me, it is NOT fun. I wonder if, someday when your sister, daughter, etc. gets raped if your opinion will change.

[formrusmcsgt]

"..to eliminate the alarming backlog of untested rape kits nationwide.
---
Of course.

And while they're at it, they need to pass a law sentencing an accuser to the same time the falsely accused served in cases when she fingers an innocent man.

[hedpig]

not only will rape victims benefit from ALL these rape kit DNAs being tested..but so will anyone convicted that really did not do the crime.

There is a man down here in florida that was convicted over 25 yrs ago for raping a child.. HE always said he never did it.. Well.. DNA finally tested... PROVED he did not... Anyone that had a part in these kits NOT being tested needs to be fired!