(Editor’s note: This is one story in a series about new laws that have an impact on Hoosiers)

By Lacey Watt
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – For Kristen Pulice, some of the most painful stories she encounters in her role at the Indiana Coalition to End Sexual Assault come from victims of rape who never see their assailants brought to justice.

“These stories are difficult to hear and honestly, they never should get easier to hear,” Pulice, ICESA’s chief operating officer, said. “They are real and they are raw.”

Assault victims might have a new tool that will allow them a little more control over their case.

Legislation passed in the 2019 will give victims the ability to track what happens to the rape examination kits. Effective July 1, Senate Enrolled Act 424 allows victims to register for updates about the kits as well as requiring law enforcement to provide the Victim Services Division of the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute with information about their storage.

New rape kits will have a special barcode that will be scanned and updated in the system to let victims know of their location in the testing process.

Pulice joined ICESA President Tracey Horth Krueger at hearings during the legislative session in support of SEA 424.

The ability to see the whole process of their rape kits being tested and processed through an online tracking system  that will showwhen the kit is picked up from the hospital by law enforcement, when it is sent to crime lab for analysis, and when it is returned to storage following analysis.

She said shebelieves that for a victim of sexual assault, having the knowledge and transparency of their kit in the system can provide them with a sense of control and empowerment, which can be part of the healing process.

Sen. Michael Crider, R-Greenfield, author of SEA 424, has been working to get justice for rape victims since 2015. That year he worked on legislation that came to be known as Jenny’s Law, named for a student who was raped while attending Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. The rapist confessed years later after the statute of limitations expired, which meant he couldn’t be prosecuted.

Jenny’s law allows prosecutors to file charges after the five-year statute of limitations expires: if DNA evidence is discovered or identifies a suspect, new records, such as photos, are found, or if a confession is made.

“After we passed that bill,” Crider said about Jenny’s law, “I started seeing cases being made on our sexual assault kits, matching sometimes as 30 years old, and matching criminals.”

Following “Jenny’s Law”, Crider worked on legislation in 2017 that asked state police to take look at unprocessed kits, which resulted in the report showing the 2,560 unprocessed kits.

After seeing the numbers, Crider said he wanted to create a better tracking system, in order to give victims more assurance that their kit won’t be forgotten about, and the ability to see where their kit is in the process. That became SEA 424.

Despite the passing of SEA 424, not all kits will be analyzed because Indiana does not have a law requiring that all reported kits be tested.  The decision to test a kit rests with the prosecutor. Crider believes that the choice to test a kit should be with the victim, and the choice should be respected.

The 2017 state police report had data from 91 of 92 counties, excluding Warrick County, and showed there were a total of 5,396 untested kits in the custody of law enforcement. Of that number, 416 kits were known as “Jane Doe” kits, 1,669 were no crime/false report kits and 751 kits reported as being adjudicated cases.

This leaves the “net” number at 2,560 untested kits. This is the most up to date number provided by the Indiana State Police (ISP) audit in 2017.

After completing an exam for a rape kit, the kit is sealed and labeled with the evidence, such as saliva, blood, semen, urine, skin cells and hair. The hospital where the evidence was collected contacts law enforcement to pick it up. If the kit is anonymous, it will be held in storage for up to one year.

Anytime within that year the victim can decide to report the crime to law enforcement.  If the victim files a report, the kit would then be picked up and submitted to the Indiana State Police lab or the Marion County Crime Lab for processing.

After the medical forensic exam, victims will be provided with information about the tracking system including login information and a unique pin that will allow them access.

“When a sexual assault victim seeks status updates on their sexual assault evidence kit, they will no longer be at the mercy of the prosecutor’s office or law enforcement office to get back with them,” Pulice said. “The sexual assault victim is in control.”

Devon McDonald, executive director of Indiana Crime Justice Institute (ICJI), said this fiscal year, the state appropriated more than $2.7 million to the ICJI to pay the providers for the collections of the kits.

To test every kit the agency needs more funding because there aren’t enough resources now.

“We would have to hire more staff and equipment,” McDonald said. “They would also have to hire scientists and lab techs they need to process the evidence.”

Testing each kit costs around $1,000, according to Crider, but can vary based on the evidence within the kit. For example, testing DNA on clothing requires a different process from testing fluid DNA.

“There are cases that are horrible in nature, and that the offenders are typically not one-time offenders,” Crider said. “My goal is to make it possible we have every opportunity to get the bad guys in front of a judge as early as possible.”

FOOTNOTE: Lacey Watt is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

TheStatehouseFile.com 

EDINBURGH, Scotland – If we listen, blood can whisper old, even ancient, truths to us.

Long, long ago, my ancestors lived in this country. My mother’s people were lowland Scots. They lived here, the family stories go, until they bet on the wrong side in one of Britain’s many battles of royal succession. They found themselves transported to Northern Ireland, where they were supposed to serve as a Protestant presence grafted onto a determinedly Catholic land.

Several generations later, not many years before the American Revolution, they left and landed in the Carolinas, before heading north to Indiana around the time of the War of 1812.

But they began in this land.

Part of me – part of my children – began in this land.

I didn’t journey first to Scotland until I was in my late 30s. My wife and I came on our honeymoon. We roamed from Edinburgh to Inverness to the Isle of Skye. We walked over streets that were here when my ancestors lived in this land. We hiked trails both green and stony.

Scotland spoke to me then.

It’s spoken to me ever since.

It wasn’t just that the country is beautiful – although it is beautiful. The sky here achieves shadings of blue and gray that can soothe the most unquiet spirit. The highlands have a harsh, craggy splendor, earth and stone reminders of the weight of eternity.

But it also was that this place was part of me.

One of the homes of my heart.

On that first trip, while my new bride did some shopping in Edinburgh, I stopped at a pub for a pint. Or two.

The guys at the table next to me started reciting poetry. They were several rounds ahead of me. The drinks took the edge off their Scots burrs and transformed every “s” into ”sssssh.”

It also made their recital endearing, particularly when they reached the climax.

A man’s a man for ‘a that.

Even slurred, Robert Burns’ poetry spoke Scotland’s soul.

I also wandered the bookstores in Edinburgh, Inverness and elsewhere, reading upon the Scottish Enlightenment as my wife and I traveled – the long struggle to unshackle the human mind and spirit from all forces that would bind them. As I did, I understood in ways I never had before the devotion my mother’s people had to learning and to charting their own courses. I began to realize my resistance to outsourcing my thinking might be more than a personal quirk.

The inertia of generation after generation after generation fighting to find its own way could have done something to push me down that path.

One late afternoon, we stopped the car along an ocean cliff. I walked out to the edge of the bluff and looked at the water, whitecaps rippling the surface as far as my eye could see.

I never have been a man who finds peace with ease. At that moment, though, I felt nothing but serenity.

As I stared from atop that craggy bluff at the long stretch, I thought about the people whose blood flowed through my veins and how they walked this land centuries before I was even a notion. I thought about the children my wife and I wanted to have.

In that moment, I saw and felt both how important I was in the living moment to my wife and, God willing, my children and how small a piece I was in the endless chain of existence.

I thought about how big and how small we all are.

We’ve been given reason these days, in some of the worst possible ways, to reflect upon where we all came from. Regardless of the motivation, it’s worthwhile exercise, because such reflection, if done with honesty and in the right spirit, should engender humility.

And gratitude.

I’m in Scotland again, this time with my son, who is approaching his own age of manhood.

As he and I stroll these ancient streets, I think about where life might take my children and where it took all those came before us.

As my son and I walk, the past itself seems to flow through our veins.

If we listen, our blood can whisper truths to us.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.