Seattle Police to start DNA testing on more than 1,200 stored rape kits

In a move being applauded by victim-advocacy groups, The Seattle Police Department will begin testing the 1,276 rape kits it has stored.

Following a sexual assault, victims often undergo a forensic examination that collects potential evidence like blood, semen, and saliva, and preserves it in a kit. When a kit is tested, the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab enters the results into the Combined DNA Index System, an FBI database with DNA profiles, and looks to see if there is a match. Of the 1,641 rape kits collected by the department in the past 10 years, just 365 have been tested, The Seattle Times reports.

The backlog in Seattle and across the country is due to the high cost of testing, which ranges from $500 to $1,500 per kit, but in November, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. pledged up to $35 million to test rape kits across the country. “We want [rape victims] to know that we, as a nation, are doing everything in our power to bring justice to them,” he said.

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