Brimhall, Holden

Unsubmitted Sexual Assault Kit Intiative

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Julie Valentine, College of Nursing

Introduction

Sexual assault is a serious public health concern that has extremely long-term mental and
physical health implications for victims. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2012)
estimates that 1 in 71 men and 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime. The
key for getting these men and women the justice and closure they need is often found in their
Sexual Assault Kits (SAKs), which collect physical evidence from the sexual assault survivor for
the state crime laboratory to analyze. Unfortunately, only 20% of SAKs are ever submitted to the
Utah Bureau of Forensic Services state crime laboratory for DNA analysis (Valentine, 2013).
This project seeks to increase the number of SAKs submitted to the state crime laboratory by
developing a tracking system that will monitor the progress of every SAK given to law
enforcement. Increasing the number of SAKs that are analyzed by the state crime laboratory will
lead to justice and closure for many victims of sexual assault. To help accomplish this difficult
task, Dr. Julie Valentine applied for and received both the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative
(SAKI) BJA-2015-4115 Grant and the New York County District Attorney’s Office Sexual
Assault Kit Backlog Elimination Grant (DANY), together totaling 3.2 million dollars dedicated
to testing previously unsubmitted SAKs and improving Utah’s response to sexual assault cases.
Only nine jurisdictions in the United States jointly received these grants, creating an important
and unique opportunity to lead the nation in the testing of unsubmitted SAKs. While 3.2 million
dollars is a significant source of funding, it was not enough to pay for the inclusion of research
assistants. Receiving an ORCA grant allowed my participation in this nation-leading
development of Utah’s new approach to sexual assault.

Methodology

The goal of the Unsubmitted Sexual Assault Kit Initiative is to aid in the development of a
system for the testing of all previously unsubmitted Sexual Assault Kits (SAKs), support the
investigation and prosecution of the resulting cases, and to develop a SAK tracking system to
prevent a future backlog of unsubmitted SAKs. To accomplish these goals, a committee
comprised of representatives from police districts in Salt Lake County, the Salt Lake DA’s
office, Wasatch Forensic Nurses, Utah’s Coalition Against Sexual Assault (UCASA), Salt
Lake’s Rape Recovery Center, the University of Utah, and Brigham Young University met once
per month.

Committee meetings were typically an hour long, followed by an hour of subcommittee
meetings. Both meetings involved reports on current SAK testing rates, updates on tracking
system development, and round table discussion about various topics like proper victim
notification.

My specific duties as a member of the Unsubmitted Sexual Assault Kit Initiative involved
keeping minutes for both the main committee meeting and the subcommittee meetings,
presenting at the Utah Conference for Undergraduate Research, and creating and maintaining an
online database for the Initiative committee.

Results

Due to the confidential nature of the work, specific details of the committee’s results cannot be
reported here. At the end of the three-year period, however, results will be released by the
committee.

Discussion & Conclusion

The goal of the Unsubmitted Sexual Assault Kit Initiative was to aid in the development of a
system for the testing of all previously unsubmitted Sexual Assault Kits (SAKs), support the
investigation and prosecution of the resulting cases, and to develop a SAK tracking system that
would prevent a future backlog of unsubmitted SAKs. I was partially successful; over the course
of the eight months I attended the Initiative meetings I was able to work on parts of all three
goals. I learned much from the open discussions involving the many interested parties, like how
to organize a plan that all can be happy with and about the necessity of well-organized
subcommittees. It is far more difficult than I anticipated to work effectively when there are so
many people with different backgrounds and perspectives on how to accomplish the same goals;
however, I also learned that it is having the same goal that makes coherence possible. When the
goal of helping victims of sexual assault was at the forefront of the discussion, much more work
got done.

Due to some unfortunate politicking, our team was removed as a member of the Initiative eight
months into the three-year project. This was, of course, disappointing, but my mentor
immediately transferred me and my coworkers to a new project designed to elicit the reasoning
behind low rates of SAK submission. This project is still in its beginning stages but I am
confident that as it continues, the survey we develop will be an invaluable tool in aiding victims
of sexual assault in Utah, and eventually across the nation.