States crack down on at-home sexual assault kits
Douglas Sacha via Getty Images
Policymakers are concerned that self-administered sexual assault exams can impede justice and recovery for survivors.
Nationwide, there’s an estimated backlog of 90,000 to 400,000 rape kits. In recent years, one company has sought to close that gap by offering sexual assault survivors a more private, convenient way to collect evidence of the attack at home. But states are saying the self-collection kits could impede proper medical and criminal justice responses.
Leda Health, founded in 2019, offers kits for collecting evidence of sexual assault, also known as rape kits, which allow users to undergo the process at home without needing to visit a hospital or police station.
“We believe that making this resource available is critical to incidents that would otherwise go unreported, untreated, and unsolved,” said Madison Campbell, founder of Leda Health, in an open letter last year.
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, for instance, found that just 22% of sexual assault survivors reported the crime to police. People often cite fear of retaliation from perpetrators, stigma against sexual assault — like victim-blaming — or trauma as barriers to reporting incidents to law enforcement.
But policymakers remain concerned over the validity and feasibility of at-home kits when it comes to their impact on police investigations, court proceedings and trauma response systems for sexual assault.
“There’s starting to be a lot of concern about whether or not these kits are fit for purpose, and a lot of states are coming to the conclusion that they’re not,” said Stefan Turkheimer, vice president of public policy at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, or RAINN.
At least two states — Maryland and Washington — have banned the sale, advertisement or distribution of at-home rape kits. Maryland lawmakers approved the ban earlier this year, and Washington’s 2023 law was upheld by a federal judge in October after Leda Health challenged it.
“Sexual assault kits are used as part of a forensic examination, conducted by a trained medical professional, to gather evidence from survivors of sexual assault to be used in subsequent investigations and prosecutions,” said Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson in a statement at the time. “Evidence collected using at-home rape kits outside a hospital setting are rarely, if ever, admissible in court.”
Since 2019, at least 10 states have sent cease-and-desist letters to Leda Health. And several state attorneys general have issued warnings about the kits, citing that they could lead survivors of sexual assault to forgo professional medical examinations and recovery resources provided by forensic examiners, nurses and law enforcement agencies.
In a May letter to Leda Health, Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry said the at-home kits violate consumer protection laws, have not been approved by the state health department and fail to meet standards set by the state legislature for the proper collection of evidence and provision of survivor services like counseling.
Turkheimer added that DNA collected with an at-home kit from Leda Health is not uploaded to the national Combined DNA Index System, a federal database for forensic laboratories at the federal, state or local level to share DNA profiles. The database helps authorities link offenders to crimes, he said, meaning efforts to find sexual assault perpetrators could be hindered without comprehensive data.
The Leda Health site recommends that users who do wish to utilize the CODIS database should consult a hospital or law enforcement authority.
Since one of the main reasons people seek sexual assault exams is to hold perpetrators accountable in court, Turkheimer said at-home kits are unlikely to help survivors obtain proper justice.
But states have had a poor track record of processing rape kits effectively, leaving many sexual assault survivors to wait months and even years for their cases to be investigated by law enforcement, said Alex Little, an attorney for Leda Health. “That will have to change for there to be progress.”
Indeed, 35 states have implemented rape kit tracking systems to help survivors monitor the status of their kits. Pennsylvania became the latest state to do so, after Gov. Josh Shapiro approved a bill in October to establish a statewide evidence tracking system.
NEXT STORY: States overwhelmingly approve noncitizen voting bans