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“THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE IS DENYING JUSTICE TO VICTIMS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H5092-H5093 on July 13, 2015.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE IS DENYING JUSTICE TO VICTIMS OF SEXUAL
ASSAULT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the Department of Justice is failing rape victims.
Across America, an estimated 400,000 untested rape kits sit on shelves. Government officials long blamed a lack of resources to test the kits; so Congress fixed this problem in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, VAWA, as it is called.
VAWA included the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Reporting Act, or SAFER, which allows and mandates that 75 percent of Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant funds go directly to test the long backlog of rape kits.
The bottom line, money has been allocated to fund the backlog of 400,000 rape kits. Funds are required to be made available for audits, so we could find the true number of languishing kits throughout different States and then test them.
The goal of SAFER was to ensure that no rape kit went untested, so all victims had answers and all rapists were brought to justice; yet, Mr. Speaker, it has been 2 years. Kits remain in basements on dusty shelves, and nothing has changed.
The money is there; the law is written, but the DOJ, the Department of Justice, shamelessly ignores this mandate leaving sexual assault victims waiting for justice. Meanwhile, untested rape kits create an unfair treatment of victims. One thing it does is it allows the guilty outlaws to go free and prevents the innocent from being exonerated.
Also, the statute of limitations may expire. Then, when the criminal is captured, he may escape justice because the kit was analyzed too long after the crime was committed. That is a travesty of justice. It is an insult and shameful treatment of sexual assault victims.
To quote an old legal maxim, ``the criminal goes free because the constable has blundered'' or, in this case, the constable is incompetent.
Without this SAFER Act, which allowed the implementation of funds to analyze backlogs of rape kits, we would still be in a problem that we had 2 years ago.
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But these funds are available for the States to analyze and get the kits tested. Once tested, the results would allow the apprehension of criminals.
This is not occurring. The Department of Justice has yet to even offer the SAFER audit grants to the States. The DOJ cannot show that 75 percent of the funds are going to direct testing and lab capacity enhancement, as required by the law.
To give rape victims justice, DNA often holds the critical key and the only key to learning the identity of the perpetrators. Without this, justice is often delayed or denied forever.
Ignoring SAFER is an affront to sexual assault victims. Mr. Speaker, victims deserve to know who assaulted them. They need to know for peace of mind. It is mental turmoil for rape victims not to know the identity of the perpetrator while sometimes they still fear for their own safety. A rape kit DNA test may prove to be their best and last and only hope in knowing the identity of the rapist.
Bureaucrats should do their job. Quit making excuses for not implementing the law.
In my 30 years as a prosecutor and criminal court judge, I talked to and met a lot of sexual assault victims. Sexual assault, or rape, is, to me, the worst crime in society. And rape victims, more than anything else, want to know who did it. They want to know who did it.
We have the capability of helping rape victims know who the perpetrator in 400,000 cases. Why aren't we doing it?
Not knowing the identity of a rapist is haunting to their victims. It is traumatizing. And to know that the rapist still may be on the loose because the testing kit was not done is inexcusable incompetence.
Each day that goes by, we are running out the clock on the statute of limitations, increasing the chance that criminals may escape the long arm of the law. It is time to analyze the 400,000 rape kits and capture the rapists.
The Department of Justice must live up to its name. Enforce the SAFER Act and follow the law. The Department of Justice must ensure justice for victims. Until then, many rape victims see no justice.
Our country deserves better; sexual assault victims deserve better; and, Mr. Speaker, justice deserves better. Because, justice is what we do in this country.
And that is just the way it is.
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