On the Job 

A Q&A with Ilse Knecht of the National Center for Victims of Crime
 
Ilse Knecht has been working to advance the DNA analysis of untested sexual assault kits for nearly 15 years. She is deputy director of public policy for the National Center for Victims of Crime and director of its DNA Resource Center. We spoke with her about victims’ needs and other issues related to the testing of old kits.
 
Are you encouraged that Ohio and several large cities are clearing law enforcement shelves of these kits and getting them tested?
 
Yes. In fact, I use Ohio fairly frequently in my talks as a model to explain to people how important it is to test these kits. I was just at the National Conference of State Legislatures, and I mentioned the successes Ohio has seen to legislators who came by. It’s definitely in many ways a model for other states that are dealing with these huge numbers of kits. We all felt a little weary at the beginning just because the numbers were so high in so many places. But when you see the results coming out of places like Detroit, Houston, and, of course, Cleveland, you know it makes sense to go ahead and test the kits.
 
In what ways do you see Ohio being out front on this issue?
 
Most of my interaction has been with Cleveland. Once officials there got a hold of how many kits they had, they made some decisions about how to send them out. Of course, they were up against the statute of limitations, so in some instances they just had to send those first. But they were pretty assertive and aggressive about just going ahead and sending them all and getting those results back and going after the offenders. They have had some great results. I think the prosecution, in terms of really going after those cases, has been really great, just figuring out a way to make it happen.
 
The Attorney General has obviously been a huge part of this. I’d like to see leadership like that in other states. BCI, from my interactions and understanding of how it’s been handling this, has taken this head-on and figured out a plan for how to get the kits in and test them. From the Attorney General to the lab and then down to some of the locals, there is a lot of “let’s get this done” attitude.
 
Is there any way of knowing how many untested kits exist nationwide?
 
Really, it’s impossible to say. We estimate hundreds of thousands. The Rape Kit Action Project that I’m working with now has been proposing ­— and provided assistance to quite a few states — to just start with a count. A lot of states don’t know how big their problem is. In many places it is a resource issue. But we could have as many as 10 states introducing legislation to require law enforcement to go into their evidence rooms and count their kits. There have been other states ­— Colorado, Illinois, and Texas — that have legislated this issue already.
 
There are requirements on dealing with the old kits that have been sitting, but then also about the kits that are coming in the door now. Once we get rid of the old backlog, we don’t want more backlog. We want to change the system so it doesn’t happen again.
 
Do you feel like a dent is being made in the problem?
 
I do. When I talk to communities that are grappling with this, I say, “Look what other communities have discovered with testing — all the serial offenders, specifically in Cleveland.” I think other states are looking at those successes and feeling like they can do something about this. They think, “We can really do this, and it’s worthwhile to do it. Look at these cases that they’re solving. We want to make sure our communities are safe, too.” I do see a shift across the country of people saying it’s worthwhile to get on top of this issue.
 
As we’ve seen in Cleveland and Detroit, in a fair number of the cases that they’ve solved, some of the survivors were women who were living on the margins of society, and the perpetrators know that those are the people they can prey on and maybe nobody’s really going to care. Not to be glib, but prostitutes can get raped. It used to be that people didn’t really believe that, and now they understand that these guys are serial offenders and choosing these women as targets. These guys won’t stop until we stop them.
 
What else are we learning about sexual assault?
 
Dr. Rebecca Campbell talks about the neurobiology of trauma. When you learn about that, you start to understand why victims can tell one story one minute and another story the next. It’s because their brain is fragmented at the moment and they can’t recall memories. Now we’re seeing more training on that. I think we clearly had bias in many of these places. If you were from the wrong part of town and people didn’t like what you said in your interview, your kit went on the shelf. Also, the national database went online in 1998. If you had a case without a suspect before that, there often really wasn’t a good reason at that time to send the kit for testing.
 
All these factors run together, and we’re seeing a turnaround in understanding about these cases, understanding about the power of DNA to solve these crimes, and even how it can be collected from a scene. In one case, a law enforcement officer was collecting DNA and knew the perpetrator had tied up the victim using a phone cord. He also knew that he had used a glove on one hand. So somehow he figured out that the perpetrator had to put the phone cord in his mouth to tie it, and he took that phone cord for analysis and that’s how he got the guy.
   
What should law enforcement keep in mind as they reach out to victims in their investigations?
 
Think about what could be happening in victims’ lives today and the impact the crime had on them. In a Colorado case, a survivor was notified that they found her offender 18 or 19 years after the sexual assault. When the police got to her house and knocked on the door, she stepped out of the house and said, “Don’t ever come back here again. My son was a product of that rape, and he doesn’t know it.” So it’s important to take into consideration that you’re stepping into somebody’s life and you’re reigniting trauma. Dr. Campbell’s research tells us that when a person is assaulted, the fight, flight, or freeze mechanism — a very basic human response — kicks in. When somebody comes knocking on your door 20 years later and is talking about that situation, you can immediately go back to that trauma.
 
Officers have to remember the range of feelings that they could be awakening. Certainly anger, not only at the perpetrator, but at the system that let the victim down. Twenty years later, after they get through the shock, they say it’s great to know that somebody still cares and that the system did end up working for them. You can expect such a wide range of emotions. Being ready for that and trained on how to handle it is important.
 
Why are victim advocates’ involvement so important in these cases?
 
We really advocate the team approach. If you’re doing an in-person notification, you should have an advocate with you. That’s not to say that law enforcement officers can’t do a good job at this. I’ve seen great ones. But we still really believe the team approach is best. That way, there is one person who is there solely to help the victim with whatever the victim needs at that moment. An advocate is not worried about the investigation of the case or getting details about what happened. The advocate’s concern is the welfare of the victim. That’s a huge thing.
 
Is some of what we’re learning helpful in responding to recent crimes, too?
 
In sexual assault cases that are happening today, what you want to do is let victims have a day or two — Dr. Campbell actually says two full sleep cycles — to get to that place where they’re not in the hyper-stress trauma of the moment. Then go back and do some interviewing. What we really advocate is that when you go and say to survivors, “We’ve got this news. We want to talk to you,” you give them options. “Do you want to hear about it now? Would you like to come down to the station later?” Then they can choose the timing, and they can choose if they want to bring a support person. In most cases, the time is helpful. If you are going to show up at their door and press them at that moment, you’re going to get more no’s. But if you leave them and let them sit with it and get their support systems around them and maybe see a crisis counselor, you’re going to get more participation and cooperation in both old and new cases.
 
For many victims, going to a police station is extremely traumatizing. Maybe the only time in their life they’ve ever been there was after they were raped. You might meet them at the rape crisis center or somewhere else, and the victim can be empowered to choose the location. People who are sexually assaulted often feel powerless. They had a situation where at that moment they were powerless over their life. Giving them choices and options helps return the power in old and new cases.
 
It’s also important to keep them informed throughout the process and make sure they know what could happen next. And also to not give false promises, such as, “We’re going to arrest this guy and put him in jail.” You can’t say that. You can say, “We’re going to do the best we can do. We’re going to protect you, and we’re going to make sure you are afforded your rights as a survivor.” That’s why it’s really good to have a victim advocate involved from minute one. Advocates can really make sure they are helping them get connected to various service providers or agencies that can help them with whatever they need.
 
What if victims don’t want to be involved?
 
Sometimes victims just want to be left alone, and that has to be accepted, too. I don’t think it’s a problem to go back to victims who say, “No, I don’t want to do this,” in a week and say, “We just want to make sure before we don’t move forward.” But if, after some time, they say, “I don’t want to do this, and I want to be left alone,” I really do think we have to accept that as a final answer. We do know that when victims are supported and feel like their questions are being answered and they’ve got a support person, they’re more likely to cooperate and be involved in the criminal justice process.    
 
Where do you hope all of this leads?
 
One thing that has served for me as the takeaway has to do with learning from the past and applying it to the future. We don’t want to see people work through these old kits and then continue to respond to sexual assault in the same way. We should be learning from this and changing our approach to sexual assault cases.
 
Clearly in many places where we have these kits, there were breakdowns in the system in terms of understanding and investigating these cases and bias against victims who don’t present in the best way. We should be learning that our methods need to change. Police can look at the cases that they had in the backlog when they locate a serial offender. What was the original investigation for that case like? Maybe it was nothing. I’ve seen police files where the report basically says, “Victim was a crack addict.” That’s not really an investigation. What are we doing with the cases that are coming in the door today? We need to learn from the past and apply it to the future so we can really respond to sexual assault cases in a more effective and victim-sensitive way.
 
This is also about getting serial offenders off the street. It’s a public safety issue. It’s horrifying when you look at some of these offenders who were walking the streets of Cleveland for 20 years. We’re talking about really preventable crimes in some cases. If we had done the right thing in the first case, we would have been saving lives. That’s a hard pill to swallow, but you take that lesson and you move forward and try to do a much better job in the future.