Montana to begin processing untested rape kits

More than 1,000 kits holding possible evidence of sexual assault in Montana were never tested. State officials are working to see whether those untested kits hold answers as to how Montana should respond to future assault cases.

There’s a reported sexual assault every 23 hours in Montana, according to the state Board of Crime Control. Sexual assault or rape kits are evidence gathered from survivors of an assault to potentially be used to identify and prosecute their attackers.

In Montana, 1,140 evidence kits were never sent to the state’s crime lab. State authorities said many of the untested kits are from cases over the last 10 to 12 years — several date back to the 1990s.

Sometimes those kits weren’t tested because survivors didn’t want to press charges. In other cases, there wasn’t enough evidence. Those decisions often fell to local entities processing the case, such as sheriff offices and city police departments.

This month, those evidence kits were federally certified, according to the Montana Department of Justice. As a result, the kits will be sent in phases to Sorenson Labs in Salt Lake City for testing starting this month.

“It’s an initiative to look in the past, so to speak,” said Chief Deputy Attorney General Jon Bennion.

The information harvested from testing could add to the state and federal DNA databanks, which could be used for future investigations.

“We’re looking at what the state’s response has been so we can improve how we all respond to sexual assault crimes,” Bennion said.

In 2015, Montana Attorney General Tim Fox created a Sexual Assault Evidence Task Force to track unsubmitted kits and understand why they sat in storage. The move came in response to nationwide concerns over untested sexual assault evidence kits across the country.

Last fall, the U.S. Justice Department awarded Montana $2 million to complete the work. The state also received an additional $284,500 to help state officials track kits generated by local authorities.

The state sought those funds after launching an inventory of untested kits. In February of last year, state officials said a survey of 109 law enforcement agencies across the state revealed at least 1,400 rape kits had gone untested. Some of those kits have since been tested or the investigations completed.

Bennion said there will be instances when the kit findings may not produce an investigation. But he said a statewide look at the process is a worthwhile effort.

In recent months, Montana has hired a coordinator to help process the untested rape kits, all of which have been collected from local authorities and are now housed in an evidence facility in Helena.

Joan Eliel, the initiative site coordinator for the Montana Department of Justice, said now that the certification is secure, “we can move forward on working actual cases.”

With kit testing set to begin this month, the department expects to start receiving results as early as September.

Eliel said the state will hire a sexual assault kit initiative victim advocate to help install victim notification procedures. The role also will connect survivors to resources in their communities.

The state has said it will also hire an investigator to handle sexual assault cold cases, as well as a law enforcement training coordinator.

The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that less than 35 percent of all sexual assaults are reported to police.

One of the most common reasons for not reporting an assault was that the crime was a personal matter. Other factors included a survivor’s fear of reprisal, desire to protect the offender or belief that police could not help them.

This fall, the state’s Sexual Assault Evidence Task Force will meet again to discuss how local jurisdictions should uniformly handle the assault evidence kits. The task force also will conduct a final review of a database portal that will allow survivors to track the status of their kits.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.