By Kurt Anthony Krug
Legal News
At the beginning of this year, Enough SAID (Sexual Assault in Detroit) — collaboration between the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, the Michigan Women’s Foundation, and the Detroit Crime Commission — was launched in an effort to raise money to test untested sexual assault kits, investigate the result cases and, ultimately, prosecute the rapists.
“The Enough SAID partnership and the support it has already received to date is a critical statement in our world that crimes against women will not be brushed aside or diminished in any way,” said Carolyn Cassin, MWF president and CEO.
This is a direct response to the 11,304 unopened, untested sexual assault kits (SAKs) dating back to the 1980s that were discovered at a Detroit Police Department (DPD) storage facility that had been taken over by the Michigan State Police (MSP) in 2009.
A preliminary review revealed a majority of these backlogged SAKs had never been submitted to either the DPD Crime Lab or the MSP Forensics Lab for DNA analysis.
They’ve been lain dormant ever since.
SAKs are performed in the aftermath of a sexual assault. They contain and preserve evidence.
If the victim of the crime chooses to report the rape to police, evidence in the SAK can be a critical mechanism in bringing a rapist to justice, according to officials.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy — herself a victim of sexual assault in 1980 when she attended the University of Notre Dame Law School — was outraged upon learning this and announced the Sexual Assault Kit Evidence Submission Act in March of 2014, which provides expedient analysis of SAKs by prescribing processes and timelines for pick-up by law enforcement agents and for testing by crime labs.
The ultimate goal of this new legislation is to identify and apprehend rapists in a timely manner.
Thus far, about 2,000 SAKs have been tested, which identified 188 serial rapists, resulting in 15 convictions.
However, even with the aid of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” actress Mariska Hargitay, limited funding has been available to accommodate the number of backlogged SAKs that need testing. Due to this, Enough SAID was created.
Its goal is to advocate for additional public monies and raise private sector funding from major corporations, local business, families and individuals alike to test the remaining SAKs and eventually bring the rapists to justice.
Testing the kits will identify unknown assailants, confirm current locations of known suspects, and connect suspects to other crimes. In shorts, testing all the SAKs is the first step in guaranteeing justice for thousands of victims and ensuring a safer community.
“We’re not the only city to have found backlogs (of SAKs) — Kym doesn’t like me to say ‘backlogs’ because ‘backlogs’ suggest that somebody was working on them — that were in storage units, so nobody was working these cases,” said Cassin of MWF
She said there are some 400,000 untested SAKs in the United States, including some other cities in Michigan.
“This is not a unique problem,” Kassin said, “but what is unique in Detroit is Kym came to the (MWF) and the (DCC), and she’s really trying to create a public and private collaboration to work together to solve this problem.”
Enough SAID is the first of its kind in the nation.
“It’s the only place in the United States that we can find that’s not going to rely on public money. Everyone is going to their state legislature or their city to test these kits and bring the criminals to justice who perpetrated these crimes,” said Cassin.
“That’s not the case here because we don’t have a city that we can go to with excess funds that can allocate them,” she said. “Our idea was to start a public and private partnership, where we go to the corporations and citizens of the state who want a safe Detroit and who want justice for these women.”
Added Worthy: “As far as I’m aware, the public private partnership with the (MWF), the (DCC), and the (WCPO) is unprecedented… However, just testing the (SAKs) will not bring justice to one woman who had her kit sit on a shelf. It is critically important that we investigate and prosecute these cases. That is the only way that true justice will happen, and the only we will have a safer Detroit and a safer Michigan.”
The MWF will grant money raised for Enough SAID to a fiduciary, which in this case is the DCC.
Comprised of former seasoned police officers and FBI agents, the DCC’s mission is to lessen the burdens of government and the citizens of the southeast Michigan area by facilitating the prevention, investigation, and prosecution of crime.
In the case of Enough SAID, the DCC will establish a Cold Case Unit with the adequate resources to handle the sheer volume of investigations and subsequent prosecution.
The DCC has already negotiated a reduction in the reduction of forensic labs testing the SAKs from $1,500 per kit to $490 per kit.
“We did a bulk rate deal (regarding testing the SAKs). As we move forward we will continue to handle the money as it will be raised by the (MWF) and granted to us,” said Andrew Arena, executive director of the DCC.
He said the DCC team looks forward to continuing to aid Worthy in the effort to process test backlogged SAKsand preventing future sexual assaults in Wayne County by identifying and prosecuting past perpetrators.
Enough SAID’s goal is raise $10 million from the private sector, which will help leverage additional local, state and federal support.
To date, some $800,000 has been raised since Enough SAID was launched on Jan, 6, according to Cassin.
Donations have come from all 50 states, as well as Canada, England, Finland, Sweden, Australia, Ireland and the Netherlands.
“Money comes in every day. You’d be amazed at the outpouring of support,” said Cassin. “Every dollar you contribute goes directly to the cause — you can’t say that every often —hat, to me, is important.”
Further, to ensure that a backlog of SAKs never happens again in Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder signed HB 5445 last summer, enacting legislation that mandates faster and more organized SAK testing.
The SAK backlog has already been mentioned in Whitmore Lake author Loren D. Estleman’s latest novel, “You Know Who Killed Me.”
It also plays a pivotal part in Allison Leotta’s upcoming novel, “A Good Killing.”
“What Kym Worthy has done in Detroit is nothing short of extraordinary,” said Leotta, a Farmington Hills native and former sex crimes prosecutor in Washington, D.C. “I hope that more prosecutors’ offices around the country follow her lead and address the urgent issue of testing their backlogs.”
For further information or to donate, visit www.EnoughSaidDetroit.org and www.miwf.org/EnoughSaid.
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