WUNRN
USA - WOMAN PROSECUTOR LEADS MISSION
TO HAVE RAPE KITS TESTED FOR VICTIM JUSTICE
The
Detroit prosecutor is leading a charge to get her city's massive inventory of
rape kits tested—and to help other cities do the same, reports Abigail Pesta.
Plus, Sarah Tofte on why the arrest
rate for rape hasn't changed in three decades.
Kym Worthy was a first-year law student at the University of Notre Dame when she was raped. A man approached her from behind as she jogged one night, throwing a cloth over her head and pulling her to the ground. That was some 30 years ago; she never reported the attack. “Things were different then,” she says. “And I was young.”
Today Worthy is a
prosecutor in
“I was flabbergasted,” says Worthy, recalling the
day she found out about the scandal. “When victims go through a three-hour-plus
rape-kit exam, they expect police to use the evidence to catch the rapist.”
Worthy
studied up and quickly learned that this wasn’t just a
Part of the reason for the clog is the price of testing
the kits. Each kit can cost an average of $1,200 to $1,500, as technicians need
to extract and separate DNA from two people—the victim and the assailant—from a
swab, says Tofte, who writes about the issue in the new Human Rights Watch
book, The Unfinished Revolution. But resources aren’t always to blame,
she says; often the kits are simply a low priority for police.
That was the case in
So far, two men—Antonio Jackson and Eric Taliaferro—are
going to court this spring as a result of the study. Both men allegedly broke
into women’s homes and sexually assaulted them at gunpoint.
She says she would have been drawn to this
pursuit regardless of whether she herself had been raped, but that her
experience gives her a unique perspective. “When victims tell me they can’t
really remember everything that happened, I understand that,” she says. “I
can’t remember exactly what happened to me either. I honestly can’t tell you if
it happened fast or what was going through my mind.” The attack occurred on a
jogging trail near her apartment complex in South Bend, Ind. Worthy had gone
out for a run one night after studying for final exams, in the hopes of
relieving stress. “He never said a word,” she says of her rapist. “I never saw
his face.”
She says the incident is “something
you never forget,” but not something she dwells on. “I come from a military
family—I am not an overly emotional person,” she says. “I told my friends and
my family what happened, but I picked up and I went on.” She thinks the ordeal
made her a better prosecutor. “There are things you are dealt that strengthen
or weaken you later on,” she says. “It made me stronger.”
Worthy, a single mother of a 14-year-old daughter,
Anastasia, and 3-year-old adopted twins,
Her next challenge is finding the funds to finish testing
all the kits in