Rape Kits Are Going Unused Because Police Don’t Take It Seriously

Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins and Mollye Barrows discuss the issues involving the lack of interest from police, and a large number of unused rape kits.

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About a year ago, the Governor of Oklahoma, Mary Fallin, issued an Executive Order in the State, telling authorities to find out just why exactly they have a backlog of thousands of unused rape kits. Now, Molly, this is not necessarily something that is unique to Oklahoma, but right now it looks like we're only seeing Oklahoma finally start to say, we have thousands of rape kits. We have thousands of cases of rape.

Yes.

These aren't being used. What the heck is going on? And I'm glad Mary Fallin's looking for answers, but there's still too many questions.

You're exactly right. It seems like the more answers they find to these questions, they're just coming up with more questions. One thing that's certainly apparent is that testing evidence in rape cases has not been a priority for the State of Oklahoma. Like you said, I'm sure it's a problem with other states as well.

But to have 7,000 untested rape kits, that adds to the trauma, I would imagine, for many of these victims. That's not to assume that each and every one is gonna proven to be true, maybe there were some false allegations, but either way, those victims that really did experience a crime, they want to know the answer so that they can have some closure in their life and move forward.

The fact that they don't have the funding and that they didn't make it, there was no statute that dictated when they had to have these tests tested, if you will, within a certain amount of time, so they just languished and sat there. These cases went nowhere, and it certainly looks like no one takes rape allegations seriously and that's not a good thing in this #metoo era.

Right. And you know women, very rarely, even after the #metoo thing, they don't get the benefit of the doubt.

Right.

I mean, it's always, she's making it up. No, it was actually consensual. Oh, she was, you know, wearing something. There's some kind of excuse in nearly every case. I constantly think of the Jameis Winston issue at FSU.

Yes.

Oh, she just, he was a famous athlete. She knew he was gonna make money, so she came forward with these allegations, which actually happened before he was even on the football team.

But the spin.

But before she even knew this guy was an athlete. So there's always, whether it's high profile or even low profile, police officers, as you and I have discussed on the show before, they don't even want to talk about it. There was the one police station-

Yes.

I forget where it was, but they had the Wall of Shame they called it, of women who made allegations that they decided were false. So they put their picture up on the wall so that women who came in to report something, that's the first thing they're greeted with.

Right.

With, if you're lying or if we think you are, or if we don't want to investigate it, we're gonna shame you to Hell and back.

Yeah. Put the burden of proof on the victim and you would think that hopefully in this discussion, this era where we're talking about these kinds of cases now, that there would be this tendency to believe, and not in an unfair sort of way-

Right.

... but just in a, hey, can we have a balanced sort of way, as opposed to your Wall of Shames or your attitude that these women did something to bring this on themselves.

But it's interesting because this task force that was compiled, that Oklahoma ordered to take a look at these untested cases and kits, had a list showing the reasons why they weren't tested, percentage-wise. What was interesting to me is the highest percentage was 32% listed as other, with no explanation offered as to why it wasn't tested.

That's concerning, and then they said 23% were a lack of victim cooperation. That bothers me, too, because to a certain extent, and I need to become more familiar with Oklahoma's laws, but police do have, and prosecutors as well, from my understanding, at least a little bit of leeway in pursuing these cases, regardless of what the victim necessarily wants if they believe a crime has been committed. So it looks like it's like they're looking for an excuse.