Repeated studies document the failure of law enforcement to send completed “rape kits” for analysis and refer cases for prosecution.  Even those cases referred by law enforcement to prosecutors are often never charged and prosecuted. Many factors are involved in the under-investigation and under-prosecution of rape and sexual assault cases.  Mistaken beliefs about rape victims making false reports and what constitutes “real rape”; lack of knowledge about victims’ apparently counterintuitive behaviors such as not resisting, delayed reports and post-assault contact with the offender; and concerns that the cases are too hard to win all contribute.

It is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of kits that victims and examiners turned over to law enforcement in good faith, but that law enforcement never turned over to a lab for analysis.¹ It is important to note that not every rape kit will yield DNA evidence, and that the absence of DNA does not mean that there was no sexual assault, but DNA evidence can be a valuable investigative tool and piece of evidence. (Module 5 explains what DNA evidence can, and cannot, tell the courts.) Moreover, although DNA evidence is not generally required to prove a sexual assault, because jurors have come to expect forensic evidence in light of televisions portrayals such as C.S.I., testing these kits is essential to ensure a complete presentation of evidence or lack thereof.

A study to determine whether having medical forensic sexual assault examinations conducted by skilled SANEs impacted adult sexual assault prosecution rates reviewed six sites. It found that 80%-89% of cases reported to police were either never referred by police to prosecutors or were not charged by the prosecutor’s office.² 

Researchers in Utah looked at six law enforcement agencies across Salt Lake County to determine whether the 1,657 cases with medical forensic sexual assault examinations conducted by skilled SANES were being referred and charged in the years 2003 to 2011. They found that across all agencies only 34% of cases were referred to the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office, and of these, prosecutors declined to file charges in 75.5% of them. There were two years in which the District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute 100% of the cases referred by law enforcement.³ 

In 2012 the directors of End Violence Against Women International (EVAWI), the leading national organization that trains law enforcement officers on how to respond to sexual violence cases, published a comprehensive review of the many studies on the prosecution of sexual assault cases, including national studies funded by the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The various studies reviewed documented that of all the sexual assaults perpetrated during the years of the studies, between 5-20% were reported to police.  Of the assaults reported to the police, between 73% and 93% were not prosecuted.⁴