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A year after a USA TODAY investigation revealed that police around the country weren’t following up on DNA evidence from unsolved rape cases, the Justice Department has published a report urging them to do so.
But the guidance doesn’t guarantee the problem will be solved.
That’s because a federal grant program designed to help state and local agencies deal with untested rape kits has not addressed significant deficiencies uncovered by USA TODAY in 2024: Agencies that receive grants face no penalties if they ignore the Justice Department's recommendations.
USA TODAY found that although the grant program has spent nearly $350 million since 2015, cases continue to hit the same roadblocks they did when victims first came forward months or years earlier: kits left untested, haphazard or cursory reviews by police and prosecutors, and a reluctance to inform people about what happened to evidence collected from their own bodies.
The new report recommends that agencies develop written policies that lay out “expectations, roles, and responsibilities” for what to do when evidence from a previously untested rape kit matches a profile in the national DNA database, known as CODIS. Those matches allow police to link the genetic evidence in unsolved crimes to specific people, other crimes, or both. The matches can be key to solving cases, but only if police find out about them and take action.
Policies should ensure notifications of matches are internet-based and become part of case files so they are accessible to multiple people, the report says. Today, some notifications are sent by U.S. mail or emailed to a specific person and are lost or ignored if that person has changed jobs, according to the report. And the tracking shouldn’t end there. The report sets time frames for assigning a detective to each case and starting an investigation, as well as for automatic email notifications to higher-ranking officials if these things are not done.
The new procedures are needed because DNA matches from thousands of crimes − called “hits” by law enforcement − are still being shelved, ignored or "missed entirely," according to the report.
“Without multiple layers of accountability in place, CODIS hits may be inadvertently missed, not assigned, or filed away without being addressed,” the report says.
No follow-up on thousands of DNA matches in Louisiana
The federal grant program, known as the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, has given money to 90 state and local agencies, including three grants in Louisiana.
In that state alone, suspects who left DNA behind after at least 2,400 crimes, including homicide and sexual assault, have never been caught, according to an email sent by Capt. Chad Guidry, director of the state police crime lab, to Louisiana legislators and others, which was obtained by USA TODAY. The number is probably higher because officials in Jefferson Parish, which borders New Orleans, did not report its numbers to the crime lab.
Reasons for not following up on DNA matches around the state included “lack of contact, jurisdictional delays, or investigative backlog,” the email says.
Louisiana Sen. Beth Mizell said police and prosecutors must do better.
"With evidence from the rape kits, charges can be brought against those who committed the assaults. That's a first step toward the justice survivors deserve," she said. "We expect that much."
The data from Louisiana mirrors USA TODAY’s 2024 analysis of 14 representative grant recipients, which found that fewer than 10% of rape suspects with DNA matches to the national database have been convicted.
No requirement to investigate DNA matches from rape kits
Agencies that receive federal grants from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative aren’t required to spend it − even if rape kits remain untested and perpetrators are still free.
That hasn't changed since USA TODAY's investigation was published a year ago. The state of Maryland, for example, returned $600,000 to the federal government last year, according to a report from the state's Sexual Assault Evidence Kit Policy and Funding Committee.
Grantees also aren't required to meet any benchmarks for testing kits, notifying victims about results or conducting investigations.
Instead, the federal government has contracted with RTI International, a nonprofit research organization, to provide recommendations. The Justice Department pays the group to identify best practices and train investigators across the country. The "Training and Technical Assistance" portion of the grant program has cost taxpayers roughly $29 million.
A spokesman for RTI International declined to make the lead author of the new guidelines available for an interview. He also did not answer questions about what prompted them or how they were developed. A spokesman for the Justice Department, which oversees the grant program via its Bureau of Justice Assistance, did not respond to a request for comment.
Victims aren't notified of DNA results from rape kits
The new guidelines also mention − but don't solve − another problem identified by USA TODAY’s 2024 investigation: the failure of law enforcement to notify victims when their evidence matches a suspect.
Of 42 victim notification policies obtained by USA TODAY, just eight recommend contacting all or close to all victims. At least six policies said victims should be contacted only if authorities believed their cases could be investigated or prosecuted.
Of the 14 representative grant recipients in USA TODAY's analysis, the four with the highest notification rates shared test results with about one person for every two kits sent for testing. The others reached just one victim for every 15 kits, and a few contacted almost no one. In Wisconsin and Orange County, California, officials reached only a single person for every 43 kits sent for testing.
Police in Wichita, Kansas, tried to reach just 17 victims from roughly 1,100 sexual assault kits. An official there said that in some cases, police had learned the names of suspects as a result of DNA testing but hadn’t shared them with the victims. That decision was made because authorities did not plan to pursue the cases and didn’t want to retraumatize the survivors.
The new federal guidance tells agencies to share the news of DNA matches with survivors “in alignment with your agency’s … protocols” but stops short of stating what those protocols should be. It adds that when notifying a survivor of a match, authorities should explain “its relevance to the investigation and any potential implications.” Victims should be supported throughout the process, the report says.
For Kim Bergman, who lives near Kansas City, the recommendations don’t go far enough.
When she was 19, Bergman woke up half-undressed after passing out at a college party. Her friends, who had seen a man walk into the room where she was sleeping, suspected she had been raped and called police.
USA TODAY does not identify victims of sexual assault without their permission. Bergman, who agreed to the use of her name and photograph, told USA TODAY she spoke with officers and went to the hospital for a rape kit exam.
“I don’t remember anyone ever following up with me on any of it,” she said. "I never got any results from the hospital. I never got any information from the police."
That was in 2005. Bergman, who also had been molested by her gymnastics coach as a child, went on to become an advocate for survivors of sexual assault. At a news conference two decades later, she learned that backlogged kits were being tested with money from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, which made her wonder what had happened to hers.
Bergman called around and learned her kit had been tested a few years after the party. No one had told her because the results were negative.
Bergman said she still would have liked to know. She believes a conversation about her test results could have been an opportunity to offer her resources such as counseling.
“Just because there’s not a hit doesn’t mean something didn’t happen,” she said. “And when we're looking at sexual assault, people don't stop at one. So anything we can do to help put these people away or get on a registry, we should."
Contributing: Nick Penzenstadler, Jayme Fraser and Dian Zhang
Gina Barton is an investigative reporter at USA TODAY. She can be reached at (262) 757-8640 or gbarton@gannett.com. Follow her on X @writerbarton or on Bluesky @writerbarton.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A year after USA TODAY investigation, rape kit backlog persists
Reporting by Gina Barton, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
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