Bill to require a statewide sexual assault kit tracking system is signed into law

HORRY COUNTY, SC (WBTW) – South Carolina Law Enforcement Division has until January to present a plan for a sexual assault kit tracking system to the House and Senate judiciary committee. 

Governor McMaster signed a bill requiring a tracking system on May 14th.

As of now, a victim of sexual assault does not know where their test is in the criminal justice system, or if it has been tested at all.

The law also will require SLED to submit two reports to the House and Senate judiciary committee a year.

The reports must include: the number of kits in the system statewide and by jurisdiction, the number of kits that have gone through forensic testing statewide and by jurisdiction, the number of kits added to the system since the previous report, the average time it takes for kits to be forensically tested, the number of kits destroyed and removed from the system, the number of kits not tested after a six-month time period and the number of kits not tested after a one-year time period.

One victim advocate in Horry County says, this system will award victims their power and control back over their situation.

“People can be their own best advocates, we can help in that process as an advocacy agency and give people the tools and information they need, but sometimes them just being able to be informed gives them more power,” Tracy Bowie, director of the Rape Crisis Center of Horry County and Georgetown County said.

Bowie also hopes this will help clear a back log of kits and help more victims come forward.

“If you’re looking at things online or in the news and they’re saying, “Hey, there’s a backlog of these kits and they are not even being tested and we don’t know where they are”, it’s a hard thing for people to want to come forward and do that process,” Bowie explained.

In addition to helping victims, Horry County solicitor, Jimmy Richardson says, this could also help them prosecute cases by holding agencies in charge of test kits accountable.
“If you have a rape kit that is performed at a hospital and that is taken and sits on the shelf at a police station; the accountability is there too,” Richardson said.

Richardson said, though not all cases require DNA evidence to prosecute, it can help prevent an appeals process.

“You always have to worry about a year and a half, two years later, six years later having to re-try it because they said, “Well if you would have just tested my DNA,”” Richardson explained. “Usually when we do test the DNA, it backs up everything we said in the trial, but we have had that happen before.”

Richardson says they don’t know how long tests will take to come back when working on a case.

“There’s always been these arguments back and forth about how long does this take to get through SLED and get a result and sometimes you’ll say, “Oh, 60 days,” in truth it’s probably about a year, year and a half,” Richardson said.

However, if there is a trial looming, Richardson said, SLED will work with them and has turned results on tests within 24 hours before.

“When we really start pushing them hard, and say, “Hey guys, I can’t help when the police took you this rape kit, this judge has set that trial for this date either with you or without you.””

Below is a statement from Tommy Crosby of SLED about the passage of the bill:

“Now that H.3309 has been signed, SLED will continue the process of evaluating commercially available software tracking systems that will meet the requirements set forth in the Bill concerning both tracking and reporting.  SLED will also continue working with our stakeholders to establish a working group comprised of medical professionals, lab specialists, IT experts, law enforcement, and victim’s advocacy partners to develop both administrative guidelines and training programs for system users. 

It’s difficult to give a time line this soon after the Bill was signed but our focus is to establish a comprehensive program that not only meets the requirements set forth by legislators but also meets the desires and needs off all involved. “

Below are the number of kits turned into SLED’s Forensic Lab. These are statistics through 2019 and do not reflect the total number of tests in the state of South Carolina.