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Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is a talking-head in "Destroyed: How the Trashing of Rape Kits Failed Victims and Jeopardizes Public Safety," a CNN documentary that aired Nov. 29. (A longform narrative story based on the documentary is at the link.)
Mariska Hargitay (left) and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy
As the title indicates, the story is about the years-long struggle to properly collect, and preserve the evidence collected from sexual-assault victims. Across the country, including in southeast Michigan, rape kits have too often been treated casually, even discarded, by police and prosecutors. This can lead to serial assailants going unidentified, endangering more potential victims for years.
In 2009, more than 11,000 untested rape kits were found in Detroit police storage, some dating to 1984. Worthy has made it a priority of her office to test the evidence within and put it in a database, so that even if these assailants are unlikely to be arrested and charged for these crimes, should they do it again, their DNA will be on file. The effort has required supplemental funding, from the county and private sources, which Worthy had to pursue.
“It’s time to give sexual assault victims the justice they deserve,” Worthy told Deadline Detroit last week, adding that she expects the effort, now almost 10 years in the works, will “certainly be a big piece” of her lifetime legacy of work. “We have attacked a large national problem that hopefully will be (rectified) in my lifetime.”
In the Wayne County backlog, now in its final stages of testing, 833 serial rapists have been identified, and led to 152 convictions, Worthy said. The state has launched a pilot program to put these and new rape kits into a tracking system, so no more will be lost.
“If you can track a package, why can’t you track a rape kit?” Worthy said. The system will be the first in the country, she said.
Worthy is a sexual-assault survivor herself, raped while a law student. She chose not to report the attack, in common with more than two-thirds of similar victims. As the documentary states:
It is a triumph, Worthy said, when a victim musters the courage to go to police and consent to a rape exam. And destroying a rape kit is a betrayal.
The work isn’t done yet. Although the last of the 11,000 is now being tested, Worthy estimates three to five more years of prosecution and related legal work.
Worthy sat for an interview with the Detroit Free Press on the subject last year.
