The Pros And Cons Of Testing Of Rape Bees

“They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.” Louise O’Neill. Rape has become a widely recognized issue in recent decades, however, an estimated 63 percent of assaults are never reported to the police. Differences in 1930’s issues compared to present day include: false rape accusations centered around racial prejudice, but now skirt the main issue of rape itself; victims still face many obstacles but now feel more supported; development of rape kits helped solve many suits but make survivors wearisome; and today’s trials are not based on accusations, but are based on evidence.

In the United States every two minutes there is someone that is sexually assaulted. In the state of Texas, every 2 in 5 women and every 1 in 5 men have been sexually assaulted. According to TAASA.org, it is reported that “6.3 million Texans have experienced some form of sexual assault in their lifetime.” In 2011, Senate Bill 1636 was passed in Texas where it was required for rape kits to be sent to labs within 30 days. Before Senate Bill 1636, there was no law in the state of Texas that required kits to to be tested within a certain time frame. When bill 1636 was passed it was also required that there be a count on the backlog of rape kits, and it was found that there were 20,000 kits that had not been tested. After seeing that there was a

There are two types of rape kit backlogs in the United States: the publicly-known backlog of unexamined kits that have already been submitted to labs for testing and the secreted backlog of kits in law enforcement safekeeping that have not been sent for testing. This latter backlog is of particular concern since the programs already in place to reduce backlogs in laboratories, were not intended to address unexamined evidence stored in police stations. http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=InNews&ContentRecord_id=d005d0ed-c1ad-4971-ad7b-edf6ffb20307 .

In 1993, an unknown assailant raped, sodomized, and robbed at gunpoint Natasha Alexenko, a 20-year-old college student living in New York City, while she walked to her apartment. After the assault, Alexenko went to her apartment and waited for an ambulance to take her to the hospital. At the hospital, Alexenko had a rape kit collected. The New York City Police Department exhausted all leads, however they could not identify Alexenko’s attacker. Alexenko’s rape kit remained in an NYPD property office for nearly a decade.

You may think the justice system does a good job with convicting the guilty, but after reading timothy Cole story you may retract your pervious thought. Timothy Cole was a 26 year old college student at the notable Texas tech. Cole was also a veteran who spent 2 years in the army .on march 24,1985 Michele Mallin who was also a student at Texas tech, had parked her car when an individual had approached her car inquiring about jumper cables. The individual that approached her forced her into her car and had driven her to the outskirts of town and proceeded to rape her and fled via foot. Ms.Mallin proceeded the next day to the local police to do a police report they took her report, they also proceeded to do a rape kit on her. Which typically

Testing all backlogged rape kits (also known as sexual assault kits) places colossal burden on government employees. Analyzing all untested rape kits stresses forensic laboratories. Ritter states that, “the demand for DNA testing continues to outstrip the capacity” (40). This information portrays that forensic laboratories that test DNA found in rape kits cannot handle any more kits, since the laboratories already have too much genetic information to test. Because the labs already have a tremendous amount of DNA to test, adding to that amount will only stress workers. Since the

In America over sixty percent of children suffer from neglect, sixteen point six from physical abuse and seven point one percent from emotional abuse in their household. Sue Monk Kidd portrays fourteen year old Lily Owens to have an abusive father in her novel The Secret Life Of Bees. Lily’s father T-Ray is abusive in many ways but he chooses to manipulate her more than anything else. He keeps important information about her deceased mother away from her, he forces her to sit on grits for hours at a time until her knees are bruised, and does not hesitate to hurt her.

Once the results of testing were completed in this case, it positively matched two of the six rapes being investigated. The problems associated with this technology were that no real national database that was established or in place for complete comparison, and the since the technology was considered being fairly new it would require it to go through an

Because there are many different types of crimes, it is often difficult to find enough physical evidence to convict a person. For example, in rape cases there is usually only a small amount of physical evidence, so cases are based on word alone. Because of DNA testing we can now take samples from the victim and attempt to match the results with those of the suspect. Therefore, DNA is sometimes the only real way of determining the guilt or innocence of a suspect without having any witnesses. Since many rape cases are left unsolved, DNA testing is believed to be the most accurate way of keeping sex offenders off the street. Because of the growing trend of using DNA in rape cases especially, a company in Brooklyn now advertises a small flashlight-like device intended to be used to jab at attackers in order to collect a sample of his skin for later use (Adler). According to a study by Joseph Peterson, with the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Illinois, DNA evidence does not have a major impact on the decision to either convict or acquit

One problem is thirty-four out of fifty states have statutes of limitations on sexual assault, ranging anywhere from three to thirty years (Holter). Statutes of limitations give a victim a certain time to report the attack or press charges against their defender. Some states have the clock starting from the date of the assault, while for other states the clock starts when the crime is initially reported. An attack from many years ago can be solved with the DNA found from the suspect, but the suspect cannot be charged because the crime happened outside of the statute of limitations. A recent topic in the media is Bill Cosby being accused of rape by fifty-two women, one of the victims, Jenny Wendt, had only two weeks to press charges against Cosby because of the statutes of limitations in Indiana (Smith).

Rape is one of the most widespread and ubiquitous violent crimes facing America, making laws regarding rape and the judicial processing of rape increasingly important. The judicial process itself deters both rape reports and rape convictions. Not only does the judicial processing or rape cases itself deter reports and convictions, but it also has a negative impact on the moral and mental well being of the victims who decide to pursue their cases.

We have seen rape-law reform takes place in the United States over the last decade.The evolution of awareness of rape changed federal legislation which was enacted in 1994 and known as the Violence against Women Act (VAWA). This act was reauthorized in 2000 and 2005. Many attempts have been made by researchers to measure rape, and the findings vary across the board. There are a lot of rape statics that are very unreliable and misleading. Rape is determined and counted by the data source that is used. The FBI’s UCR Program reported 88,097 in 2009, and these were completed or attempted rapes. The best measure of rape is the National Violence against Women (NVAW) Survey. 18% of

It’s a statistic that has circled around the nation for years, one that imprints fear into the minds of young adults and rage into those that demand justice: 1 in 5 female college students will experience sexual assault in the duration of their college career (Clark), with only 20% of those rapes being reported to the police (Hefling). As a topic that is so highlighted in American society, there is a strict demand for an organized, thorough investigation that will result in justice served. Controversy regarding whether the colleges themselves or the criminal justice system should adjudicate the punishment for these vile crimes has arisen; some believe that as an actual crime, these assaults should be taken in a legal stance in order to serve justice at its fullest extent. Others believe that determining punishment through the court system is too nerve-wracking for the victims and that by allowing colleges to do so is the only way they can avoid feeling “skepticism” by the police, juries, or courts (Know Your IX). However, when juxtaposing the capabilities of the colleges and the court system when it comes to the adjudication process, it is evident that the courts are more competent in determining punishments for campus sexual assaults.

The Centers for Disease control reports that one out of every five women will be sexually assaulted or raped during their lifetime with most victims being girls or younger women. According to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network (https://www.rainn.org) which calls itself “the nation 's largest anti-sexual assault organization,” nine out of ten rape victims are women and there are more than 237,000 victims of sexual assault in the U.S. every year, with a reporting rate of only 40 percent. Eighty percent of victims are under 30. Two-thirds of all the reported assaults are by someone known to the victim and only 3 percent of rapists get any jail time. The effects of rape are long lasting and have public health and social welfare consequences. According to RAINN, victims of sexual assault have higher rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and drug and alcohol abuse than the general population. Rape is a personal issue because of the trauma it induces in its

Women, girls, men, and boys are vulnerable victims of sexual assaults every day in our country. While females experience much higher rates of sexual assaults than males. The problem that this country faces is the lack of being able to track rapist, in addition to the victims that chose not to report their assault of being raped to the police. Issues of under reporting comes from the victims with multiple reasons that hinders them from reporting these heinous criminal acts. Thus, the sad realization is that the perpetrator is usually some one that you know, that you would of never of thought that they could and would, and do sexually assault you.