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Sexual assault kit tracking program gives survivors a small piece of control
Kylie Jones reports.
TAMPA, Fla. - A new statewide program in Florida returns a small piece of control back into the hands of sexual assault survivors.
FL Track-Kit is a cloud-based database to allow survivors across the state to track their sexual assault kit.
The program is live two months ahead of schedule and now available to anyone in the state who has a rape kit done.
For survivors of sexual assault, The Crisis Center of Tampa Bay says it’s more than just a new piece of technology.
Sexual assault victims can now track their rape kits.
"What we were hearing from survivors for many, many years is that, you know, they would go through this extensive process," Clara Reynolds, the President & CEO of The Crisis Center of Tampa Bay, said. "This can take hours in order to gather all of the DNA evidence, and then they wouldn't know what happened to the kit."
Track-Kit allows survivors to track their sexual assault kit any time, anonymously.
"They can see starting with the point of the medical facility collecting that kit," Marcie Scott, a crime laboratory analyst supervisor with the FDLE, said. "And as it moves from the law enforcement agency to the laboratory and back to the law enforcement agency."
File: Sexual assault kit.
The Crisis Center of Tampa Bay is the only certified rape crisis center that completes sexual assault kits in Hillsborough County. Reynolds says every person who has a rape kit done will get a card with information on how to track their kit.
"As a part of that kit, each kit is labeled with a specific number," Reynolds said. "And so that survivor is going to receive a username and password specific to their kit. Even if they want to, they can actually find out if their DNA was a match."
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The program follows years of work to improve the system for processing sexual assault kits and offering resources for survivors.
In 2016, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement says there was a statewide backlog of around 13,000 sexual assault kits. FDLE officials say some of those kits were in county labs.
File: Woman in a lab.
Over the course of several years, the FDLE says it processed around 9,000 kits.
Scott says these efforts lead to Gail’s Law, passed in 2021. She says this law requires sexual assault kits to be submitted to the lab within 30 days and have testing completed within 120 days.
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"She wished she would have known what happened to her kit and where her kit was at in the process," Scott said. "And so she didn't want anyone else to have to go through that again. And so she pushed for this update in order to ensure that survivors of sexual violence know where their kid is at any point in time."
The efforts evolved into creating Track-Kit, in hopes of keeping a backlog of building back up with untested rape kits.
"We're not going to go backward," Scott said. "We're not going to end up in a situation like we were in, in the past. We're only going to be moving forward now."
Scott says this also helps keep the judicial system from becoming backed up and cases from getting delayed.
"A timely testing of the kit can definitely help the prosecutors make their decisions in terms of whether or not they can move forward with the case," Scott said.
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Reynolds says during the last fiscal year, The Crisis Center of Tampa Bay did 334 rape exams. She says they also provided other resources to 407 other survivors who experienced a sexual assault.
"And if this little bit, you know, goes a long way in helping you in the healing process," Reynolds said. "I just think that there's nothing we shouldn't be doing to help these individuals who have experienced one of the worst things that will ever happen to them in their lives."
The Crisis Center of Tampa Bay just opened another facility in Ruskin to help more people in the community.