Apr 8, 2009 10:48 pm US/Central
6-Month Delay On DNA Evidence Angers Rape Victims
Gov. Blagojevich Diverted Money For Processing Rape Kits To Other Projects
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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A woman who was brutally raped and beaten six months ago is still waiting for her rape kit to be processed.
CBS
She was raped and beaten, and the answers to who did it may be sitting on a shelf. Rapists are still on the streets because of numerous untested rape kits. That is the harsh reality for a Chicago woman attacked six months ago.
After going through the painful process of having evidence gathered from her body, she waits in agony over the thought that her attacker's identity is sitting on a shelf at the Illinois State Police crime lab. CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports with a follow-up to what has become a scandalous DNA backlog.
"The hardest thing is when you know someone knows you and you don't know who they are," said a sexual assault victim whom we will call 'Jane'.
Jane, a businesswoman, wanted to tell her story. She hopes state officials who see it will finally understand what the bureaucratic backlog of 1,066 DNA tests means in the real world to victims of sexual violence.
She was asleep in her bedroom. Suddenly, a man wearing a mask and armed with a knife broke through a window at 3 a.m. When she resisted his sexual assault, he began beating her viciously.
"He hit me over and over and over, and continuously," Jane said. "Blood was all over. All of this was swollen."
Like another rape victim CBS 2 interviewed last week, Jane never saw her attacker's face and might have trouble identifying him.
Fortunately, nurses at Holy Cross Hospital's emergency room prepared a rape kit with DNA that Chicago detectives sent for analysis to the state police crime lab, hoping to identify the rapist.
State police told CBS 2 Wednesday night that the analysis was recently concluded, and that detectives ought to have the results any day now.
In contrast to TV shows like CSI, in Illinois at least, the wait for DNA test results can be excruciatingly long.
"It's really unfair. It really, truly is unfair," Jane said. "We can find money for everything else. How can you not find money to make our lives safe?"
The Illinois Auditor General actually found a shocking amount of money, $19.3 million, which was supposed to go to the crime lab but was spent instead by former governor Rod Blagojevich on other things, including state police cars.
Gov. Pat Quinn said he's working to clean up the scandal.
"I've spoken to legislative leaders about it," Gov. Quinn said. "We will do whatever necessary to get this problem corrected."
When this sexual assault victim found out from police that it may be six months to a year to process the DNA in her rape kit, she was distraught.
"That's devastating," Jane said. "In six months to a year, something else can happen to someone else, and then that kind of weighs heavy, that another woman can be victimized and then another person's life can be in jeopardy or many people's lives can be in jeopardy because the system is just extremely slow."
A spokesman for the Illinois State Police told CBS 2 Wednesday night that the crime lab finally completed the DNA analysis in Jane's case in March 25th, exactly four months after receiving her rape kit. They are not revealing whether or not the DNA made a hit in identifying Jane's rapist.
Jane and her advocates at the YWCA would like policymakers in the Illinois State Capitol to set 30 days as the goal.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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