Busting the Backlog

Women who come forward and report rapes endure two- to four-hour rape kit exams, and think their cases are being investigated, but the sobering reality is many of these kits are never processed. According to End the Backlog, an initiative of the nonprofit Joyful Heart Foundation, more than 200,000 rape kits still await testing today. A 2011 report from the National Institute of Justice found that 18% of all unsolved rapes between 2002 and 2007 involved forensic evidence that had never been