Michigan Gets $7.5 Million Grant to Go After Rapists

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Michigan will get $7.5 million in federal grants to clear a backlog of untested rape kits, including 11,000 found abandoned in a Detroit police storage locker in 2009, and improve law enforcement response to sexual assault.

Nearly all of the rape kits have been tested, Gov. Rick Snyder said earlier this month, but the grants announced Thursday by the Justice Department will be used for further testing, pay for DNA analysis, criminal investigations and help for rape victims across the country, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The grants earmarked for Michigan and Detroit, whose backlogs are considered among the worst in the nation, are part of a $41 million grant package made under the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative announced by Vice President Joe Biden.

Nationally, there’s a backlog of about 400,000 untested sexual assault kits.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said her office will use its share of the grant funding — just shy of $2 million — to investigate nearly 2,500 suspects that have been identified through efforts to clear the glut. About 500 of those suspects are considered serial rapists.

Related:

• Kym Worthy: Untested Rape Kits Illustrate Funding Crisis
• Detroit Discovers at Least 100 Serial Rapists After It Finally Gets Around to Processing Thousands of Rape Kits
• Untested Rape Kits, ‘Rape Insurance Law’ Combine in Chilling Message: Patch Editor’s Notebook
• Company Gives $100K to Help Wayne County Clear Backlog of Rape Cases

Worthy said personnel in her office are “beyond excited” about receiving the federal funding. She has been trying to raise about $10 million for investigations.

“We will immediately step up our investigative and prosecutorial efforts,” Worthy said. “This is a great day for sexual assault victims in Detroit and Wayne County.”

Michigan State Police will receive $4 million in funding.

Half of the State Police grant will be used to conduct an inventory of untested kits across the state, train law enforcement and prosecutors, assist with victim services, improve the system that allows victims to track the processing of their rape kits, and send untested kits to private laboratories for analysis.

The State Police will earmark another $2 million to clear 3,600 or more rape kits that are backlogged across the state.

The Flint Police Department received a $1.7 million grant, which Police Chief James W. Tolbert said will be used for further rape kit testing, a “top priority” for his department.

Barbara McQuade, the U.S. attorney in Detroit, said the grants are a “direct result of the hard work of Kym Worthy and others to refuse to accept that sexual assault victims would be forgotten while evidence sat on a shelf collecting dust.”