How do these advocates ask, how will Texas do when it has more than 5,000 untested rape kits, which languish on shelves across the state? And when have there been up to 18,000 rape incidents in the state in a year?
“It would be a nice thing to see, but it won’t happen,” Lavinia Masters, a rape survivor and advocate for other survivors, said about Abbott’s promise. “It’s unrealistic.”
Texas Department of Homeland Security (DPS) statistics show that as of August 2021, there were 5,298 unproven sexual assault kits, including 1,716 kits within the DPS crime lab system and 3,582 unrepresented kits that they remain in law enforcement agencies across the state.
And that’s not counting the kits that could still be tested at the 231 law enforcement agencies that didn’t respond to the state audit, even though the law requires it.
Her rapist, finally identified by kit tests, was already in jail, after raping two more women.
The limitation period had expired in his case.
The bill Abbott signed in 2019, designed to audit untested rape kits statewide and set strict testing requirements, was called the Lavinia Masters Act. Masters was there when she signed the bill, and she is a member of Abbott’s sexual assault survivors working group.
Texas State Representative Victoria Neave has been working alongside Masters for years to clear up the rape kit delay. At one point, there were about 19,000 untested kits.
“Each box is not just a box sitting on a shelf. It represents the story of a survivor. It represents an individual, a family that has been affected by this,” Neave told CNN. “It represents women waiting for justice.”
The state makes rape kits a priority, Neave said, and has approved $ 50 million to help test the kits, but part of the problem is the scarcity of forensic investigators to process them, he said. to say.
Masters said he still gets angry when he thinks about his case.
“I know you weren’t worried about me and what happened to me,” he said of officials. “And that’s why you just put me aside. And I know that’s part of my passion and why I get so angry with that.”
Beyond the delay, Texas ’new law banning abortions after six weeks, even in cases of rape and incest, outrages Masters. She said she knows that if she had gotten pregnant from this rape, she would not have known in time to end the pregnancy.
He should have brought and delivered the son of his rapist, at 13 years old.
“I would be forced to carry this baby,” Masters said. “That’s not even common sense.”
Neave voted against the new legislation, which he said will make women try dangerous abortions again without medical help.
“This legislation takes us back,” he said. “And the fear and concern we have is that if we can’t get a doctor to do this procedure, we’ll have women doing it in a garage or going back to the era of hangers. And that’s a concern.”
CNN’s Randi Kaye and Danelle Garcia reported from Dallas, and Theresa Waldrop reported and wrote from Atlanta.