Law Came Too Late for Some Rape Victims

But victims and their advocates are uncertain about how much things will change. They see the failure to test rape kits as symptomatic of larger issues.

“One of the most heartbreaking things about this data is it’s symbolic of how unseriously we take violence against women,” said Anne K. Ream, founder of the Voices and Faces Project, a nonprofit multimedia documentary initiative collecting victims’ stories of sexual assault.

In cases of acquaintance rape like Christina’s, which make up the majority of cases, the Human Rights Watch report said the police often decided it was not worth testing a kit because they were not convinced a rape had occurred or they did not think the case was winnable. In Illinois, only 11 percent of reported rapes yield an arrest, according to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Attorney General Madigan said, “I strongly believe that by having this law in place, we will see an increase in victims coming forward, if they know they won’t be going through evidence collection in vain, just to have it put on a shelf and ignored.”

Ms. Madigan said the new law underscored that rape of any type was a serious crime and that all kits must be tested. Even if a suspect’s identity is known, DNA evidence can identify if there were other rapes by the same person, point out inconsistencies in the suspect’s testimony and provide hard evidence for a conviction.

Only a small fraction of rapes are even reported, advocates for rape victims say, in part because of the invasive rape-kit procedure and often fruitless law enforcement process.

Julie, a 25-year-old hairstylist in central Illinois who was raped in 2007, said she hoped the new law would save other women from the anger and fear she suffered after learning that her rape kit would not be tested and that her attacker would remain free.

After she picked up a girlfriend who had been drinking on June 24, 2007, the friend invited Julie up to her apartment to watch a movie. While there, she said, a man she had never met before raped her when the friend was in another room.

Julie said she drove straight to the hospital and spent almost four hours undergoing a rape kit procedure. “I felt invaded, terrified and exposed during the rape kit,” she said. “After undressing in front of strangers, I was poked, prodded, scraped, swabbed, combed and photographed. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

Several months later, she learned that her accused attacker, who was on parole at the time, would not be prosecuted. She said a detective told her that if she wanted the results of the rape kit, she would have to pay for the test herself.

“They said it came down to he said-she said, but what’s in that box could have told a different story,” Julie said. “This was evidence in a major crime. To just drop a case without looking at the evidence doesn’t make any sense.”