Maine Continues Fight to Improve Testing of Sexual Assault Kits, as Thousands Are Left Untested Nationally

Maine state legislators are continuing efforts to improve sexual assault kit testing in the state, as kits continue to go untested in backlogs throughout the country.

“Yearly around 80 percent of kits sent out for testing collection and potentially containing evidence of sexual assault are going into what we refer to as a black hole,” said Tina Penitas, who previously served as chair of the Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner (SAFE) board.

In the previous session, legislators passed a bill intended to begin a program to track sexual assault kits in the state.

Now, the legislature is considering LD 2129, an emergency bill presented by Rep. Valli Geiger (D-Rockland) meant to further the tracking system, and improve the ability of victims to see updates on the progress of their kits’ testing.

Rep. Geiger’s bill qualified for emergency status, meaning that, if passed, it will be enacted immediately rather than being subject to the usual 90-day waiting period.

The bill was deemed an emergency because it was considered critical to strengthening Maine’s ability to enforce its laws against sexual assault.

“It is estimated that 14,000 sexual assaults occur annually in Maine alone. Only 100 to 200 sexual assault crimes are successfully prosecuted a year,” said Geiger.

Geiger went on to criticize Maine for being the only state that does not currently implement any of the sexual assault response best practices outlined by the Joyful Heart Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to fighting sexual assault.

Geiger’s bill seeks to institute some of those best practices.

Currently, Maine officials have no way of knowing how many of the test kits it sends out to hospitals have been used, and are not sent on to the crime lab, because, in many cases, victims are reluctant to report the assault, and kits are not tested unless they are related to a reported allegation of sexual assault.

The new bill would require all used kits to be recorded and sent for storage at a law enforcement facility, regardless of whether the victim reports the crime.

If the victim chooses not to report the crime, the kit will still be assigned a tracking number so that it remains in the system, and will be stored for twenty years in case the victim later decides to report the crime.

The bill also requires the establishment of software to track the test kits, which will allow each victim tested to anonymously access data on the progress of her kit’s testing.

Law enforcement agencies will also be required to report on the inventory of kits in their possession, differentiating between those which were not reported, those which were already analyzed, and those which were reported, but have not yet been tested.

Although Geiger’s bill seeks to improve Maine’s sexual assault response, it doesn’t fix one of the most significant parts of the problem.

The bill does not address the serious problem of crime labs and police stations having significant backlogs of untested kits, which have been reported.

According to Statesman Journal, kits can take anywhere between eight and 16 hours to test once the lab begins to examine them.

The Maine Wire submitted an information request to the Maine State Police, asking how many kits it has in its backlog waiting to be tested.

Paul Cavanaugh, the staff attorney for the Maine State Police, responded to the request, saying that the crime lab had 32 kits in mid-January containing potentially significant evidence in sexual assault cases which it has not yet tested.

Cavanaugh was careful to add that the state police have no way of knowing how many untested kits are being held at local law enforcement offices or medical facilities, an issue which would be fixed by Geiger’s new bill.

The Maine Wire reached out to the local police departments of Maine’s most populous towns and cities to find out how many test kits they have in their backlogs.

The numbers confirmed that a significant number of sexual assaults in Maine are never reported.

In general, local police departments send the kits to the crime lab for testing as soon as a victim reports the crime and the kit is needed for an investigation; however, many police departments have significant numbers of kits in their possession which cannot be tested because the victims have not decided to report the sexual assault.

Lewiston has 101 unreported test kits in its possession, Auburn has 59, Saco has 13, and Sanford has 11.

The backlog of sexual assault kits is a serious problem throughout the country, not just in Maine.

The national number of backlogged test kits is difficult to determine, and that difficulty is exacerbated by states like Maine, which currently do not have an adequate method of tracking those kits.

A 2022 report from the Congressional Research Service pointed to a variety of studies, which suggested that the national number could range from 90-400 thousand used kits that remain untested nationwide.

That data does not indicate how many of the untested kits are unreported, and how many have been reported, but have not yet been tested because of delays in crime labs.