Hundreds of untested rape kits are sitting in evidence rooms across the Upstate, though the reasons for the backlog vary greatly.
A sexual assault exam, usually performed at a hospital, is a way for investigators to collect valuable DNA and other forensic evidence to help track down the rapist. It can be an invasive procedure, but the evidence is collected and sealed into a “sexual assault kit” which is sent off for forensic testing – or sometimes not.
“If that victim has gone through and had a rape kit done, we have that evidence, why not test it? We have the technology, why not use it?" asked Stephanie Shatto, who works with rape victims at the Julie Valentine Center in Greenville.
The Greenville County Sheriff’s Office and the Greenville Police Department have the largest number of untested kits compared to agencies throughout Greenville, Spartanburg, Union and Cherokee Counties.
Greenville County has 312 untested kits, and the city has 116. The rest of the county departments and corresponding municipalities have fewer than 15 each.
When asked if his department was being slack in testing the 312 kits, Zach Hinton of the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office said absolutely not.
“I completely disagree with the premise of that,” Hinton said. “Like I said, an overwhelming majority of those kits are tied to cases that have already been cleared."
Hinton said after this reporter’s request for numbers, he began sifting through each case, and most of the kits are related to cases which were closed or determined to be false reports.
The City of Greenville said the same thing, and explained that not one of its untested kits would benefit from forensic testing.
But there are advocates out there, like Shatto, who say test everything regardless of whether the cases have been closed because, they say, there might be a chance to make a connection to an unsolved case.
“You know the larger our database can be of offenders, the more chances we have of catching these guys and of finding patterns and finding serial rapists. Without that additional evidence really there's no way to do that," Shatto said.
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