Name: 【TED】Kym Worthy: What happened when we tested thousands of abandoned rape kits in Detroit (What happened when we tested thousands of abandoned rape kits in Detroit | Kym Worthy)
Uploaded: 2018-10-17T14:09:00.000Z
Duration: 19 min 6 s
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In 2009, in August, my office weathered two major scandals.

The first was the arrest, trying and conviction

Adverbs of degree

and subsequent incarceration of Detroit's very popular mayor.

The second caused the Detroit police department crime lab to be closed.

It was the deputy chief of my special victim's unit,

who was breathless on the other end of the line.

He said, "Boss, you are never going to believe what I just saw."

I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach,

that Detroit was getting ready to suffer its third major scandal,

He told me that he had just visited what he thought was an abandoned warehouse

where the Detroit police department was storing evidence.

And some of them now are over 40 years old.

These kits were spilling out of large, black garbage bags

that had suffered a violent sexual assault.

Each of them voluntarily endured an hours-long rape kit process,

with the hopes that as a result of that they would find their perpetrator.

And unbeknownst to all of them, all 11,341,

those perpetrators were allowed to continue to offend with impunity.

I cannot tell you or describe to you how outraged, mad and angry I was.

back many decades ago, when I was in law school.

I also am the mother of three girls, a 21-year-old and nine-year-old twins.

I was even more horrified to learn -- if I could be more horrified --

one of the oldest of those kits -- belonged to an eight-year-old girl.

I'm going to tell you her story, but I'm going to call her Natasha.

On January 2, 1990, Natasha was at home and a man knocked on her door.

This man was familiar with her neighborhood

and was familiar with the comings and goings of her family,

He told her that her grandmother, the only mother that she had ever known,

and was laying on a couch in his house, calling for her.

Terrified that Natasha was going to lose her grandmother, she went with him.

But of course, we all know her grandmother was not there.

Once he had isolated Natasha, who was eight years old,

He raped her with his mouth, his fingers and his penis.

And he even forced his penis into her mouth.

When he was done, he ordered Natasha to get dressed,

And walked her to a factory area on the edge of the neighborhood.

He asked her if she knew -- he removed the blindfold,

and asked her if she knew how to get home from there.

And when she indicated that she did, he let her go and he walked off.

Now, the rape kit process terrifies and traumatizes adult women.

Can you imagine what it was like for a little second-grader,

who still wore pigtails and still believed in Santa Claus,

Natasha's kit sat on the shelf in that abandoned warehouse

I'll call her Pamela, that's not her real name --

nineteen years old, was walking down the street

after she had come from visiting her boyfriend.

and she felt what she thought was a gun, in her side.

to a bedroom in that house, that was filled with trash.

he would hit her about the face and the head.

He violently raped her on the floor of that bedroom

he stole her money, and he just walked away.

Pamela also reported her rape right away.

And like Natasha's, her kit sat on the shelf for 15 years.

Now, criminals, like people who raped Natasha and Pamela,

But for a rape victim, their body is the crime scene.

So many elect to go through this hours-long rape kit process

that requires every inch and orifice of a victim's body

All right after a violent sexual assault.

The reason that most people do this, who have a rape kit,

is because they want the forensic scientists to study that rape kit.

And hopefully come up with a genetic profile

that will help identify their perpetrator.

Once forensic scientists come up with this genetic profile,

they enter it into CODIS, hopefully have a match.

【TED】Kym Worthy: What happened when we tested thousands of abandoned rape kits in Detroit (What happened when we tested thousands of abandoned rape kits in Detroit | Kym Worthy)

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【TED】Kym Worthy: What happened when we tested thousands of abandoned rape kits in Detroit (What happened when we tested thousands of abandoned rape kits in Detroit | Kym Worthy)

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