What happened when we tested thousands of abandoned rape kits in Detroit | Kym Worthy

150,273 views ・ 2018-10-17

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00:13
In 2009, in August, my office weathered two major scandals.
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The first was the arrest, trying and conviction
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and subsequent incarceration of Detroit's very popular mayor.
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The second caused the Detroit police department crime lab to be closed.
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I thought nothing else could go wrong.
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And then the phone rang.
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(Laughter)
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It was the deputy chief of my special victim's unit,
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who was breathless on the other end of the line.
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He said, "Boss, you are never going to believe what I just saw."
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I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach,
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because I knew instinctively
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that Detroit was getting ready to suffer its third major scandal,
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in just over one year.
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He told me that he had just visited what he thought was an abandoned warehouse
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where the Detroit police department was storing evidence.
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Inside were 11,341 abandoned,
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untested rape kits.
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Some of them went back to the 1980s.
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And some of them now are over 40 years old.
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These kits were spilling out of large, black garbage bags
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and empty oil drums.
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Each kit represented a victim,
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mostly a female,
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that had suffered a violent sexual assault.
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Each of them voluntarily endured an hours-long rape kit process,
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with the hopes that as a result of that they would find their perpetrator.
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And unbeknownst to all of them, all 11,341,
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those kits were never tested.
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I cannot even begin to describe -- oh!
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And by the way, before I move on,
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in the interim of those 40 years,
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those perpetrators were allowed to continue to offend with impunity.
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I cannot tell you or describe to you how outraged, mad and angry I was.
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I myself was a victim of sexual assault,
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back many decades ago, when I was in law school.
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I also am the mother of three girls, a 21-year-old and nine-year-old twins.
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I was even more horrified to learn -- if I could be more horrified --
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that the oldest of those kits --
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one of the oldest of those kits -- belonged to an eight-year-old girl.
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I'm going to tell you her story, but I'm going to call her Natasha.
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On January 2, 1990, Natasha was at home and a man knocked on her door.
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This man was familiar with her neighborhood
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and was familiar with the comings and goings of her family,
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but Natasha did not know him.
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He told her that her grandmother, the only mother that she had ever known,
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had been in a terrible accident
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and was laying on a couch in his house, calling for her.
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Terrified that Natasha was going to lose her grandmother, she went with him.
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But of course, we all know her grandmother was not there.
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Once he had isolated Natasha, who was eight years old,
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he began to rape her violently.
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He raped her with his mouth, his fingers and his penis.
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And he even forced his penis into her mouth.
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When he was done, he ordered Natasha to get dressed,
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he got dressed himself,
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and he put a blindfold across her head.
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And walked her to a factory area on the edge of the neighborhood.
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He asked her if she knew -- he removed the blindfold,
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and asked her if she knew how to get home from there.
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And when she indicated that she did, he let her go and he walked off.
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Natasha's rape was reported immediately,
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and a rape kit was done.
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Now, the rape kit process terrifies and traumatizes adult women.
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Can you imagine what it was like for a little second-grader,
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who still wore pigtails and still believed in Santa Claus,
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going through this exam?
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Natasha's kit sat on the shelf in that abandoned warehouse
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for 26 years.
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Pamela, 19 years old --
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I'll call her Pamela, that's not her real name --
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nineteen years old, was walking down the street
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after she had come from visiting her boyfriend.
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She was grabbed from behind,
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and she felt what she thought was a gun, in her side.
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She was taken to an abandoned house,
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to a bedroom in that house, that was filled with trash.
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Every time she tried to resist,
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he would hit her about the face and the head.
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He violently raped her on the floor of that bedroom
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that was filled with garbage.
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When he was done,
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he put on his clothes,
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he stole her money, and he just walked away.
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Pamela also reported her rape right away.
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She also had a rape kit done.
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And like Natasha's, her kit sat on the shelf for 15 years.
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Now, criminals, like people who raped Natasha and Pamela,
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often leave their DNA at a crime scene.
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But for a rape victim, their body is the crime scene.
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So many elect to go through this hours-long rape kit process
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that requires every inch and orifice of a victim's body
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to be combed, swabbed and photographed.
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All right after a violent sexual assault.
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The reason that most people do this, who have a rape kit,
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is because they want the forensic scientists to study that rape kit.
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And hopefully come up with a genetic profile
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that will help identify their perpetrator.
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Once forensic scientists come up with this genetic profile,
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they enter it into CODIS, hopefully have a match.
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CODIS is filled with DNA profiles of people who are arrested
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and/or convicted of certain prescribed offenses.
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If in fact a profile is made and entered into CODIS,
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it can help identify a perpetrator in the matter of minutes.
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CODIS stands for Combined DNA Index System.
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Now, how did we get here?
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Detroit had no money.
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It cost, at that time that these kits were found,
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up to 1,500 dollars per kit to have it tested.
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So, you do the math about how much that was going to cost.
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In addition to that,
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within four years of these kits being found in 2009,
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Detroit would be the largest municipality in the history of the United States
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to declare bankruptcy.
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We didn't know what we were going to do.
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But not only that.
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As we began to study and investigate how this possibly could have happened,
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we discovered there were other issues besides just financial ones.
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During the course of these decades where these kits sat in that warehouse,
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we discovered there had been multiple changes of police leadership,
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with different priorities and different agendas.
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There was woefully inadequate training for sex crimes officers
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in the police department in general.
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They were chronically understaffed,
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and they had other resource issues.
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And there was perpetual victim blaming
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when these victims came to report their crimes.
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That's the rape culture.
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And because of this victim blaming
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of someone that had been violently assaulted,
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some of these victim were even ridiculed
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into not continuing to proceed with their case.
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The bottom line is, that 11,341 rape kits sat on that shelf.
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I wanted transparency.
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I asked myself: How in the world can we stop this from spreading?
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I don't want to go through all this work and five, 10 years down the line,
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figure we have the same issue.
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At that time, police officers had the sole discretion
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about whether and when and if
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they were going to submit the rape kits for testing --
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any rape kit in their jurisdiction -- for testing.
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That had to change.
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We had to take that discretion away from police officers,
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and pass state laws
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to ensure that every rape kit released by the victim to law enforcement
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is tested immediately.
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I also knew that there had to be some kind of system
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to keep everybody honest and to keep everybody accountable, put in place,
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where we knew where these rape kits were, at any given time.
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The answer was simple.
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Think about all of the hundreds of thousands
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and perhaps millions of packages,
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that are moved by a logistics company every day.
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They are scanned and tracked,
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and they know where they are, at every bend and turn,
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from the time that they're stored in the warehouse,
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until the time that that package arrives on the purchaser's front steps.
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Why couldn't we do that for rape kits?
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I had no desire to reinvent the wheel.
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So I contacted UPS.
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UPS, within two weeks -- two weeks --
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of our first meeting with UPS,
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they had come up with a major plan
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where they involved all the stakeholders --
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the police officers, the prosecutors, the medical facilities,
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the forensic nurses, the hospitals,
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the lab personnel and the victim advocates,
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could know where the rape kits were at any given time.
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They sent a team of experts out
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and fanned the Detroit area, talked to all the stakeholders
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and developed a plan,
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and studied the life of a rape kit,
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from the time the rape kit was collected,
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through to the time that it was tested in the lab
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and returned to the police personnel.
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They also developed a web-based portal
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that all the stakeholders could look into and see where any given rape kit was
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at any given time.
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UPS had the technology,
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UPS knew how to use that technology to solve our problem,
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and we didn't.
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We launched -- we, we --
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UPS and the prosecutor's office --
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(Laughter)
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launched this pilot program in Detroit.
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And we started this process on January 28, 2015,
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through to May 25 of 2016.
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And during that period of time --
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remember, we're not dealing with the ones we found,
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because they'd already been stored --
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we're dealing with any new kit that came in as of January 28, 2015.
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And we knew where that rape kit was.
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For the 16 months of this project, we didn't lose a single rape kit.
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Not a single one.
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We knew where they all were.
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(Applause)
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This project went on until the state of Michigan,
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the elected officials in state government,
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took notice of everything that UPS was doing.
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And everything that my office was doing.
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And they decided that they were going to use state funds
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to develop a state-wide tracking system.
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Not in just Detroit, but state-wide tracking system.
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Hopefully, that system will be up and running soon.
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But I loved working with UPS.
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I loved their innovation, I loved how fast they worked,
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I loved their unorthodox approach to ideas to solve an everyday, common problem,
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whose solution should be simple.
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So, after working with them
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I knew that even with one company,
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working on one issue,
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the progress that could be made.
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We've been at this now for nine years.
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And it was nine years ago
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that we rescued those rape kits from the warehouse.
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That warehouse has since been torn down.
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But all of the kits have either been tested,
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or are in the final stages of being tested.
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We still have a lot of work to do
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in terms of investigation and prosecution of those cases,
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but our rape kit issue, in terms of testing, is done.
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As of June 28, 2018,
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our CODIS hits have showed us and identified 2,600 suspects.
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We have identified 861 serial rapists.
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Just within this project.
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That means 861 potential defendants
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that have raped within the project two or more times.
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And 50 to 75 of them have raped 10 to 15 times a piece.
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In one city, in one state.
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Also, the CODIS results that we have
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have tentacles to crime scenes,
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have linkages in 40 states in the United States.
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Forty of the 50 states have tentacles to our crime testing of these rape kits.
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From Alaska to Florida
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and from Maine to the most southern parts of California.
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A sea to shining sea, string of CODIS hits.
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Natasha is now 36 years old.
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When she heard about the work that we were doing with the rape kits,
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she contacted my office, the Wayne County prosecutor's office.
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Her kit was eventually tested.
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And it had identified Paul Warwick.
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In the interim, Paul Warwick had raped two more women.
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One in the state of Colorado.
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Paul Warwick is now serving a sentence in the Michigan Department of Corrections,
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in prison, of 15 to 40 years.
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(Applause)
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Pamela's kit was also tested.
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And her kit led to the identification -- her CODIS hit on her kit --
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led to the identification of Bernard Peterson.
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In the interim, Bernard Peterson raped 10 more women.
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Each of those women had a rape kit done.
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And each of those women's rape kits sat on that shelf next to Pamela's.
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For a varying number of years.
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Bernard Peterson is now serving a sentence
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in the Michigan Department of Corrections,
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concurrently -- that means at the same time --
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of 60 to 90 years, and 90 years to 125 years,
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for the rapes that he committed.
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(Applause)
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We still have a lot of work to be done.
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And we desperately need the help of the private sector.
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We need the help of the tech industry.
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To help us develop -- not help us, we want them to develop --
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information management systems,
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so we can all talk to each other
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and stop these perpetrators
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from raping and maiming and killing with impunity.
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We also need help from those of you
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with marketing and advertisement backgrounds.
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We need you, desperately we need you,
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to develop campaigns for our children and other people to listen to,
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so we can stop the culture, change the culture of rape victims
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being too afraid to come forward because of what may happen to them.
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UPS was one company, as I said.
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They helped us with their innovation,
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and they revolutionized the way that we can track rape kits.
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Every single aspect of our lives is tracked.
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Every like, every mood,
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shopping history, browsing history, reading history,
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our entire web history is tracked these days.
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What if we could track the activities and the comings and goings
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of criminals who commit crimes?
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Just like people track every aspect of our lives.
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In 2015, the Obama White House
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and the US Department of Justice
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put the number of untested, abandoned rape kits at 400,000,
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across this country.
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Four hundred thousand.
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That's a national pandemic.
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We know where a lot of those kits are.
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Our testing showed
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that women were raped waiting in their cars, waiting for friends,
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17:48
on their way to work, on their way from work,
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at gas stations, at shopping malls.
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And even one of the first cases that we did
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when these rape kits were starting to be tested,
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was a man who came into the window
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and got into the bed and raped a woman who was in bed with her two children.
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He raped her while he was in bed with her two children.
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Every time I look at a rape victim that comes into my office,
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because their case is being called
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or they're being interviewed by the prosecutor,
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they are being prepped for case,
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I look into their eyes and I think to myself,
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they didn't have to be one of the ones that was raped.
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They didn't have to be one of those victims.
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And maybe they would not have been, if these rape kits had been tested timely.
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How many more Pamelas are in this world?
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How many more Natashas are in this world?
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We may never know.
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But what I do know is that you have the technology,
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you know how to use it
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and you can help us solve the problem of rape kits being stockpiled.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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