Summary: A serial rapist rapes the same women repeatedly over a period of many years. One of his victims, a grittified Jennifer Love Hewitt, lives as a hermit to try to hide from him, but he stalks her and rapes her for a fourth time in an alley. The police are frustrated by a backlog of sex kits, which means DNA evidence from the previous rapes has been unprocessed, lost, or destroyed.
Verdict: A-
What They Got Right: There is a scandalous backlog of rape kits in the United States. After someone is sexually assaulted, the police will ask her to voluntarily undergo a Sexual Assault Nurse Examination (also called a SANE or a rape kit). This SVU episode showed a painfully realistic one. Swabs are taken of the victim’s mouth, vagina, thighs and anus; clothing is collected; photos are taken; hairs are plucked from the head and pubic area. It is a long and unhappy process, but crucial to collect forensic evidence like semen, saliva, blood, and hairs which may contain DNA and other evidence. In many cities, though, there’s a ridiculous backlog of rape kits sitting in warehouses, gathering dust. It’s estimated that 400,000 kits in America remain untested. Some cities are doing better than others – New York has no backlog, while Detroit has 16,000 untested rapes kits. DNA testing today is incredible, with the power to definitively solve crimes like never before. We have a national databank of DNA called CODIS, which holds the DNA profiles of eight million convicted criminals — but it’s only a useful tool if we actually compare these to evidence taken from unsolved rapes. The failure to process the backlog of sex kits – which could help solve countless brutal crimes – is a national tragedy. This episode of SVU did a fantastic job of shining a light on the problem. Hopefully, it will make people talk, care, and take action.
What They Got Wrong: In real life, all the cops on this show would have been fired. When they couldn’t get enough evidence on this suspect, they passed out posters with his picture that said THIS MAN IS A RAPIST; they crashed a cocktail party and shouted that he was a rapist; they went to his job and yelled that he was a rapist in front of his colleagues and bosses. This was kooky, borderline insane. Cops and prosecutors can’t and don’t do this. We work through a very specific process. If there’s probable cause that someone committed a crime, we can get a warrant to arrest him or search his house, or we can ask a Grand Jury to indict him. We can prove at trial that he committed the crime, and send him to jail. But we can’t going around yelling accusations at his job or happy hours. Might be fun. Sure would beat researching on Westlaw. But no one who plays by the rules, or wants to keep her job, would do it.
And, I’m sorry to say, the whole premise of this story was a stretch. I’ve never heard of a serial stranger rapist who targets the same woman multiple times. Sometimes boyfriends or husbands rape their partner over and over, and the woman never reports it, or reports it but then gets back together with him. But the concept of a stranger rapist repeatedly terrorizing the same woman (much less a dozen women) is, as far as I can tell, pure imagination.
Finally, the judge got the law all wrong (but it was nice to see the mom from “Who’s The Boss” again. Where’s she been all these years? She looked good, right? Incidentally, I hear Tony Danza is starring in a new reality show where he teaches a real high-school English class. But I digress.). The judge threw the rape case out during a preliminary hearing, because the old DNA had degraded, so her “hands were tied.” But the victim had just testified that the guy raped her. That’s plenty. We’ve been prosecuting rapes without DNA evidence since Biblical times. DNA is great to have, but it’s not essential, especially if you have a witness saying “I’m 100% sure this is the guy who raped me; I’d recognize him anywhere.” I think the SVU writers threw the case out to make a point about the backlog of sex kits, but, while it was a compelling story, it was legally incorrect.
That said, the show still deserves an “A” grade, because of its important, relevant, and powerful message about the need to process the backlog of sex kits in this country.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out Linda Fairstein’s insightful essay on The Daily Beast. Fairstein headed the Manhattan Sex Crimes Unit for over twenty years, and was a leader in eliminating the rape-kit backlog in New York by instituting smart policies. She now writes fascinating novels about her work.
*All the views expressed here are mine alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Justice.
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