Mental Health Professionals Highlight Climbing Rape Kit Backlog

A group of local health care professionals sent a letter to Mecklenburg County officials this week calling for transparency, accountability and action in addressing a growing rape kit testing backlog.

Drafted by 21 members of Therapists for Change, a grassroots collective of Charlotte-area mental health professionals working toward social justice and community advocacy, the letter decries the fact that sexual assault survivors in Mecklenburg County are being told they may have to wait as many as three years to have rape kits tested following an assault.

“That’s three years of sitting in uncertainty and fear,” the letter said. “Three years of wondering if their case will ever move forward. Three years of silence. This is deeply disturbing and is, quite frankly, unacceptable.”

If a sexual assault survivor goes to a medical facility or rape crisis center after an assault, they can choose to have a medical professional conduct an examination of their body to find any DNA evidence left by their attacker. 

The evidence is then collected and stored in a sexual assault evidence kit, known widely as a rape kit, to help solve sexual assault cases. They are meant to undergo testing to match with potential suspects whose DNA is on file. 

Despite the fact that this process usually takes between four to six hours and can be a harrowing experience in itself that adds to a survivor’s trauma, it often leads nowhere thanks to a lack of testing. 

End the Backlog, a Joyful Heart Foundation program dedicated to stopping the rape kit backlog across the nation, estimates that hundreds of thousands of rape kits remain untested in police departments and crime lab storage facilities throughout the country. 

As of 2018, there were believed to be more than 15,000 untested rape kits sitting stagnant in law enforcement departments and crime labs across North Carolina. Mecklenburg County accounted for more than 1,000 of those kits.

The Charlotte Observer also reported in 2016 that CMPD had destroyed the results of around 1,000 completed rape kits. 

Mounting public pressure led CMPD and Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather to launch a years-long effort to clear the backlog. 

With an increase in grant funding from the US Department of Justice and new legislation requiring state crime labs to develop a rape kit tracking system, Gov. Josh Stein, then the NC Attorney General (NC AG), announced that North Carolina had cleared its backlog of untested rape kits in 2024.

While Therapists for Change said these steps were encouraging, members also claim the system is once again falling behind and failing survivors.

According to current NC AG Jeff Jackson’s Sexual Assault Kit Tracking Dashboard, at last count there were nearly 12,000 rape kits across the state that hadn’t yet undergone a DNA test. 

At the time of this writing, the dashboard shows that CMPD is in custody of 374 kits that need testing. In total, other departments around Mecklenburg County are responsible for 114 more untested kits. 

“Every untested kit represents a person who already went through something traumatic, and then made the incredibly difficult decision to report,” the letter said. “They sat through an invasive, painful and vulnerable medical process to preserve evidence, trusting the system to do its part. Now we’re telling them they may have to wait three more years for any real movement?”

As rape kit testing wait times increase, so does the chance of the assailant learning of the pending charges against them, putting the survivor at risk of retaliation, the letter points out. 

“As mental health professionals, we see the emotional toll this takes,” it reads. “We sit across the room from survivors who are attempting to heal while feeling completely abandoned by the systems that were supposed to protest and support them. It makes healing harder. It makes justice feel even more out of reach.”

The Therapists for Change letter calls for immediate action, as stated below: transparency around how long the existing backlog will take and what actions are being taken to clear it, the allocation of emergency funding for increased lab staff and processing, policy reform to ensure all future kits are tested within a clear and reasonable timeframe, and regular public updates moving forward. 

Read more: Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners Can Be Hard to Find in NC (2021)

The letter is signed by 21 mental health professionals and addressed to Gov. Stein, DA Merriweather, CMPD, Mecklenburg County Commissioners and members of the Mecklenburg County caucus of the North Carolina General Assembly.

“This is not just about systems, it’s about people,” the letter reads. “It’s about public health. It’s about morality. It’s about safety. It’s about dignity. And it’s about rebuilding trust.”