Schools
Survivor's Group to Team with SBU for Study of Rape Kit Backlog
Natasha's Justice Project seeks to explore the prevalence of untested rape kits following reports of sexual assault.
A West Sayville-based advocacy group will team up with researchers from Stony Brook University and a consulting firm to explore what is believed to be a backlog of thousands of rape kits sitting untested in police departments across the country, according to a Huffington Post report.
Natasha's Justice Project, founded by a rape survivor whose own rape kit went untested for more than nine years following her attack, has hypothesized that there may be a backlog of as many as 180,000 rape kits on police department shelves.
"Anecdotal evidence suggests that the rape kit backlog is large, but reliable estimates on the extent of the problem are nonexistent," Tia Palermo, assistant professor of preventive medicine at Stony Brook, told The Huffington Post.
Find out what's happening in Three Villagewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Click here to read the full story.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
