Getting Justice for Rape is Harder for Teenagers

Isabel Hardy 
1,432 Words
July 6, 2017

Getting justice after sexual assault can be especially difficult for teenagers in the United States. Teens are not likely to report sexual abuse to the police, according to multiple studies. Many teens let their attackers go without punishment, and may live lives of fear or pain. 

Already, only three percent of rapists nation-wide who are reported to police are ever incarcerated, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). 

The number of teenagers currently incarcerated due to sexual assault is unknown, but studies conducted by the National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW) show that teens between the ages of 16 and 19 are three times more likely to be raped than the general population, so the possibility of un-prosecuted teenage rapists could be greater. 

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Robert Eckstein, a professor in psychology and counseling in the University of New Hampshire stated, “sexual assault is the most unreported felony in the U.S.” 

 Nicole Daley works to change this. Daley is an advocate for preventing teen dating violence with Start Strong as part of the Boston Public Health Commission’s program for middle school students. She said that sexual violence amongst teens most commonly occurs between romantic partners.

 “The most dangerous time for a victim who becomes a survivor is when they leave their partner,” Daley said.

For Malcolm Astley, this fact rings especially true. Astley’s daughter Lauren Astley was 18 years old when she was strangled and brutally knifed to death by her former boyfriend. Lauren had just broken up with him.

Astley said that he cared and looked out for his daughter in the times leading up to her murder. However, care was not enough. Astley said that even if “young people are recognizing the signs [of abuse]... if there are no trusted channels to circulate the information and allow someone to intervene then the information is no good.” 

Astley’s “trusted channels” can be broken after breakups when feelings of fear and shame are heightened. Teens tend not to report cases of sexual assault because of the stigma about victimhood, fear of being judged by friends or family, or in some cases, fear of being further harmed, says RAINN. 

Should teenagers choose to report their assault to the police, one of the rights that they have is the right to receive a rape kit. Rape kits are conducted by hospitals and contain biological information about the victim after their rape, that could be used as evidence in court. Rape kits are important for victims to prove their assault in order to prosecute the rapist, according to RAINN. 

However, rape kits are not always the solution, no matter how important they may be in victims’ lives. Though rape kits may be conducted they are not always tested, and even after they are tested, they may be stored in facilities away from courtrooms. Rape kits are not tracked, meaning that victim’s evidence can be easily lost. 

According to a study by Affinity Magazine, approximately only four out of every one thousand rape kits are tested, and the rest are stored in storage rooms, in “backlog.” 

Illinois woman Henrietta Sykes had a story to tell about her rape kit’s backlog, as narrated on the website “Women’s Day.” Sykes became a victim and survivor of sexual assault in 2006. After a night out with friends and having had a few too many cocktails, Sykes decided to pull over at a friend’s house to stop herself from driving under the influence and keep herself safe. The next morning, she awoke to find her supposed friend had raped her. 

Sykes reported her abuse soon after and had a rape kit done, thinking that, as she said, “they were gonna go get him” because she “was raised to believe the police are your friends.” 

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But law enforcement did not come through for Sykes until nine years laterafter a policewoman from Chicago named Cara Smith stumbled across a basement that held up to “200 rape kits,” with, as Smith said, were “overflowing,” and contained Sykes’ evidence. Sykes, after living a life of depression and pain, “cried tears of joy” when news of her found rape kit came. Finally, she could make her rapist pay for what he had done. 

Cara Smith’s finding came from an investigation that came about in 2015 after 27 states enacted laws further protecting the importance of rape kits and “prioritizing the process of rape kits,” according to Woman’s Day Magazine. Attempts to focus attention on the problem yielded findings that are not uncommon. 

In the state of California alone, it is estimated that up to 2,873 untested rape kits are stuck in “backlog” in storage rooms such as the basement that Cara Smith uncovered. In other states, such as Massachusetts, police departments have not been able to identify the scope of the problem yet, with only “75 of 351 municipal departments” having submitted reports about the problem. Massachusetts and California are part of four states that are currently undergoing rape kit processing reform, amongst 24 states already doing something about the problem and 21 not having any plans for reform at all, according to activist website End the Backlog. 

Although rape kit laws have “come so far,” there are still steps that states must take in order to ensure the problem be resolved in the upcoming future. 

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For example, in 2017, Massachusetts passed a law requiring rape kits to be preserved for sixteen years, regardless if the kit’s victim comes forward to testify against his or her rapist right away. It also requires state departments to put funds and attention into researching the problem of rape kit backlogging, and searching to implement a new system of tracking kits. However, according to former Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, the law has done little to help so far. She said that there is no comprehensive system to track rape kits from hospital to police stations to court as of now. In a RAINN article, Coakley said, “It's done according to local custom, according to the practice of local police."

Rape cases are backlogged because of a lack of statewide protocols. In many states, police men and women are instructed to use their discretion to handle cases of sexual assault. In Massachusetts, local police officers have the power to deny a victim’s process of getting a rape kit if they deem the victim “uncooperative,” according to the website End the Backlog. If victims do something to annoy officers, they can be at risk of being denied the right to testify against their abusers, the webiste stated. In most of these instances, reported victim “uncooperation” comes from a police officer’s lack of training on the psychology of victims and what “cooperation” should really look like, says End the Backlog. 

Rape kits are also kept in backlog when the identity of the abuser is not known. If the victim does not report the abuser’s name and credentials or they do not know who assaulted them, cases are often swept under the rug, according to End the Backlog. 

Underfunding for rape kits in states also contributes to the problem. Up until 2015, the state of Massachusetts did not allocate any funds towards rape kits, End the Backlog reportrs. For states that are not aware or ready to tackle the problem yet, the expense of providing $1,000 rape kits can be too much. 

Finally, rape kits, according to End the Backlog, may be “backlogged” if the state in which they were conducted has “outdated” policies and protocols on sexual assault. Outdated protocols make rape kits more likely to get lost and fosters misunderstandings amongst victims and policemen about what power the rape kits can really have. 

The need for further reform and awareness continues.

Malcolm Astley said that following his daughter’s death in 2011, another fifty girls have been murdered and possibly raped at the hands of their partners in the city of Boston alone.

That is at least another fifty teenage girls who did not live long enough to report their attack, and wait for their rape kits to prove that they are survivors.