Hundreds of rape kits going untested in Southwest Virginia

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ROANOKE (WSLS 10) - A new report from the Virginia Department of Forensic Science shows thousands rape kits have gone untested across the Commonwealth.

Commissioned by the General Assembly in 2014, the report found 2,369 Physical Evidence Recovery Kits (PERK) are being held by law enforcement agencies in Virginia.

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That includes 89 untested kits from the Roanoke City Police Department, 36 from Roanoke County Police and 15 from the Bedford County Sheriff's Office. The three agencies say nearly every untested kit were not relevant to the evidence, the victim did not want to be part of the investigation, or the commonwealth's attorney declined to press charges.

Two-thirds of the departments that responded to the study statewide gave one of those three explanations for not testing a PERK. Another 20 percent said its reason was not listed.

"A review of the reasons provided by Virginia law enforcement agencies for why each of the inventoried PERKs was not tested reveals that there are PERKs that clearly should have been submitted to (the Department of Forensic Science) for analysis," the report found.

Read more below.

Untested rape kits are a problem nationwide, often due to backlogs in the state crime labs. But the report found that's not the case in Virginia, with an average turn around time of 72 days.

The reality many rape kits are not tested is frustrating for victims, especially given the mental and physical stress of completing the exam. In most cases, it must be done within 72 hours of the incident.

"At minimum it would take 4-6 hours," said Melissa Harper, a forensic nurse examiner with Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. "It's one on one nursing care where the forensic nurse never leaves their side."

The kit is used to gather DNA from a victim after a sexual assault. It often requires victims to mentally relive the incident.

Harper knows there is no easy answer when it comes to decisions about testing, but she believes testing more kits could help with other unsolved crimes.

"Sexual assault is serial in nature and it's a very small number of offenders committing these crimes," said Harper, who has served as a forensic nurse for 21 years. "Certainly, if all kits could be tested there could be a link from case to case."