By Erica Irish
TheStatehouseFile.com

 INDIANAPOLIS —Law enforcement, hospitals, and victim advocacy organizations will work this summer to create a stronger, more transparent system to track Indiana’s rape kits.

Rape kits are containers that hold DNA specimens, like fingernail scrapings and body swabs, and other evidence like clothing collected from the body of a victim during a sexual assault medical exam.

In December, a statewide audit of police labs sponsored by Sen. Michael Crider, R-Greenfield, found that 2,500 viable rape kits were never tested. More kits were never reported by law enforcement, or by victims to authorities.

That’s why lawmakers approved Senate Enrolled Act 264 during the 2018 legislative session. It calls for a study committee to recommend a better method of tracking the kits and paths to justice.

Maj. Steve Holland, director of the Indiana State Police Laboratory Division, said SEA 264 won’t add much additional work for lab employees.

Labs already use an internal tracking system with an online program called the Lab Inventory Management System, or LIMS, Holland said. The tracking system that could result from SEA 264 will be an external program that the public can access, he added. Lab workers would only need to apply and enter an additional barcode or tracking number.

“An internal system is not at all enough because it’s internal. It’s apples to oranges,” Holland said.

For victims, an external system would provide them with a unique tracking number for their case kit, allowing them to monitor the situation at any time. At the moment, victims only learn about the progress of their kit in conversations with law enforcement during the investigation process, Holland said.

Ideally, Crider said the group responsible for implementing a tracking system would provide each victim with a specific tracking number. If the victim wants to know where their kit is at in the process, this number would empower them to ask questions.

Representatives with the Indiana Coalition to End Sexual Assault (ICESA) also worked with Crider on SEA 264.

While they look forward to implementing a tracking system, Kristen Pulice, the organization’s chief operating officer, said the law is only a first step in creating a victims-first system.

Anonymous victims have one year to move forward with prosecution and testing. If the case isn’t or can’t be prosecuted, the kit is never tested and destroyed at the one-year deadline, Pulice said.

The majority of cases aren’t prosecuted, Pulice added. In some cases, perpetrators will take plea deals to one crime, which can exclude other victims; in others, she said, the victims don’t feel comfortable moving forward, often due to the shame and stigma of sexual assault.

Pulice said the tracking system will help anonymous victims the most, whose kits are placed in storage.

“Moving forward, we need to look at testing all non-anonymous kits,” Pulice said. “We also need to change our rape definition to include ‘without consent.’”

Pulice pointed to reforms in Lake County labs as ones the state should emulate.

Last month, Lake County prosecutors took an inventory of untested, anonymous rape kits in storage, according to new county-level changes.

After testing one of the kits, the department solved 2014 gang-rape and charged three men — Joshua Shipp, David Werner, and Ajahn Batty — with two counts of rape each.

In general, Holland and Crider agreed the results of the 2017 audit is generating more conversation about sexual assault crimes around the state.

Each noted that, since the audit, local prosecutors are doing their own analyses to pinpoint how many kits remain untested.

Holland and Crider also said the law might bring in kits that were never submitted to labs in the first place.

“There will probably be more kits coming,” Holland said, and for good reason — since the audit, Indiana labs received 692 additional kits, he said.

The department also found 432 of these additional cases were from incidents that happened before December 2017.

Crider said he believes the tracking system will encourage more victims to come forward about their experiences.

“In counties with a high number of sexual assaults, usually college towns, sometimes the victims haven’t participated in reporting,” Crider said. “Having the ability to track will increase communication between the victim and law enforcement.”

Crider and Holland said that increased kit testing could raise costs, with each test totaling anywhere from $750 to $1,250 depending on the number of samples in the kit.

“This could turn into a substantial number, and we recognize that,” Crider said about testing costs. “But this is the right thing to do.”

And, Crider added, increased awareness of sexual assault across industries and communities will lead to faster and more thorough testing in labs, as well as additional support from legislators.

“A tracking system can answer all of the questions that remain after the audit, and eliminate those questions,” Crider said. “We’re in a good position to get the funding we need.”

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

By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com 

INDIANAPOLIS – The note on the front window of the Kate Spade store was unassuming.

It said that the founder of the company had passed and that the thoughts of all employees were with her and her loved ones.

There was no mention of Spade’s suicide, no discussion of why she might have ended her life.

I read it with mixed feelings.

Part of me understood and appreciated the company’s attempt to respect the Spade family’s privacy in a time of immense sorrow.

But another part of me worried that there will be still more tragedies such as Spade’s if we continue to try to cloak or obscure depression and suicide as if they were shameful, things not to be discussed in polite society.

One sobering fact of living a fair number of years is that I have known more than a few people who have killed themselves.

In the wake of Spade’s suicide and that of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, the cliched response has been one of mystification about how a person who had accomplished so much could be so unhappy.

This supposed mystification assumes that happiness can be quantified – that material comfort or career success alone can insulate people from misery or mental illness. If we have enough money in the bank or enough successes in the workplace we can keep despair at bay.

It doesn’t work that way.

Some of the most “successful” people I have known have been driven by a hunger to fill holes in their souls or their hearts, great gaping wounds they attempt to heal by suturing them with wealth and achievements. The patches never hold, and the hunger doesn’t end.

Others have been convinced that they either were unloved or unlovable. They brushed away expressions of care or concern, chasing away the love and friendship for which they longed in the process.

They didn’t do this out of rational motivations. They didn’t sit down and say to themselves I’m going to work myself to the point of exhaustion, frenzy and desolation to stave off feelings of inadequacy until all my efforts fail and I’m left with nothing but emptiness. They didn’t plan to drive away friends and loved ones so that they could spiral downward into distress and desperation.

No, they did so out of a sense of compulsion, a mistaken but entrenched belief that they had no other options.

It is so easy for us to minimize another’s pain, to think that, somehow, we would be immune to it or find ways to cope with it.

But, while grief is universal, each tragedy is individual. Each person’s pain is his or her own.

This is why the temptation to judge must be resisted.

My late friend Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who himself battled depression and once attempted suicide, wrote: “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies … you’ve got to be kind.”

Kurt’s words contain a profound truth.

This world is a hard place. Much of what resides within our hearts remains a mystery, even to us.

We cannot know with complete assurance what miseries dog those around us.

But we can show compassion for what ails others. We can treat their travails with respect and consideration. We can remind them that we care and urge them to get the help they need because they are worth it.

In short, we can be kind.

Another famous author who attempted suicide and, sadly, succeeded spoke to the kind of despair that swallows up human beings.

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry,” Ernest Hemingway wrote in “A Farewell to Arms.”

It is the kindness of which Kurt Vonnegut spoke that helps people become strong at the broken places – strong enough, one hopes, to face the darkness in this world.

And in their own hearts.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

By Abrahm Hurt
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS — Sen. John Ruckelshaus, R-Indianapolis, knows the struggles of having eye problems.

Ruckelshaus is a glaucoma patient who has had 10 surgeries on his eyes. His two children, also glaucoma patients, have had both 19 and 21 surgeries on their eyes.

Glaucoma is a group of diseases that damage the eye’s optic nerve and can result in vision loss and blindness according to the National Eye Institute.

His own eye issues were what led Ruckelshaus to craft Senate Enrolled Act 158, which bans scleral tattooing. Scleral tattooing involves either scarring or inserting pigment under the eye’s mucous membrane to fill the white of the eye with color.

“What it is, is people will go in and they want the whites of their eyes to be a certain color, so these tattoo artists will basically inject into the eyeball, the white iris portion, a dye,” he said.
“Again, we don’t know about sanitary procedures, there’s no training and you just really need a trained physician to touch your eye and nobody else because of the risk of infection.”

“It’s terrifically dangerous,” Dr. Eugene Helveston, emeritus professor at the Indiana School of Medicine said.“It’s just contrary to any logical thing a person would do.”

Helveston questioned the motivation of anyone that would have this done because of the risk of infection and inflammation to the eye. The process involves using a needle to inject ink into the microscopic space between the sclera, or the white part of the eye, and the conjunctiva, a thin, clear layer on top of the sclera.

“It’s not an extension of any other kind of tattooing. It’s really a new thing of its own,” he said. “It would be like taking a beer with cyanide in it. It’s not really beer. It’s something quite different.”

As of July 1, any person that is not a licensed health care professional caught performing the procedure could face a $10,000 civil fine.

Ruckelshaus said this issue was brought to him by his neighbor Dr. Derek Sprunger, who is a member of the Midwest Eye Institute. While there have been a few cases of people having their eyeballs tattooed around the country, there have been none reported in Indiana.

The dangers of the procedure were widely publicized last fall when a model damaged her eyes when she attempted to have the whites tattooed purple.

“We wanted to get ahead of this trend that seems to be creeping across the country right now,” Ruckelshaus said. “I wouldn’t say it’s a wave-like some fashion trends are, but it is important. It’s awareness about how sensitive and how dangerous putting anything in your eye actually is and prevention of blindness.”

Indiana is the second state to pass measures against this kind of tattooing. Oklahoma first banned the practice in 2009.

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