Hawley’s office receives grant for rape kit testing, tracking system

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley’s office announced Monday that it had been awarded $2.8 million from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, which will go toward tracking and analyzing over 5,000 untested rape kits.

The kits, which are completed by victims of sexual assault for the purpose of forensic analysis, have been left untouched by law enforcement officials, as ABC 17 has previously reported.

An audit by Hawley’s office found that, across the state, there are at least 5,424 kits that have not been submitted for DNA analysis, and that number is expected to rise as staff continues to search law enforcement agencies and health care providers.

The grant money will go toward contracting labs to test and ship the kits, as well as creating a statewide tracking system so victims can see where their kits have been transferred. For more information, click here.

Jennifer Carter Dochler, public policy director for the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, said while the grant is “absolutely critical” to addressing untested kits, it does not address the full problem.

The timeline for the grant, obtained by ABC 17 News through a sunshine request, includes a plan to test hundreds of the kits in the next year. However, there is not enough money to test all of the untested kits found by Hawley’s office or any that could be submitted in the future.

“In the long run, we’re probably going to need additional resources for the crime labs to process.”