Audit: WA clears decades-long backlog of untested sexual assault kits

(The Center Square) – Several years after it was revealed Washington law enforcement agencies had a backlog of more than 10,000 untested sexual assault kits, a new state audit has found that Washington State Patrol has effectively eliminated the state’s backlog and is now testing nearly all kits within 45 days.

The Washington Attorney General’s Office got involved in 2018 to create an inventory of unprocessed rape kits after reports of backlogs in several states, including Washington. 

“The AG’s office did an inventory to get an idea of how many rape test kits were backlogged across the state and they found there were more than 9,000 kits that remained untested,” said Erin Catterlin, a senior performance auditor with the Office of the Washington State Auditor.

She continued: “In 2022, our office conducted a performance audit that was legislatively mandated that looked at whether the state had eliminated the sexual assault kit backlog by the required deadline of Dec. 1, 2021.”

At that point, the state patrol had not met benchmarks.

“What we found in that audit was that they still had thousands of sexual assault kits that remained untested and only 74% of the kits in the backlog were tested,” Catterlin explained during a Wednesday phone interview.

As of this week, fewer than 1% of kits in the original backlog remain untested.

“The state is testing about 95% of kits received within 45 days as required by state law,” Catterlin noted.

Taxpayers covered clearing the backlog.

“The state patrol did receive over $30 million, and they used that mostly to expand their laboratory in Vancouver,” said Catterlin, who noted some serial offenders have been prosecuted by clearing the shelves of untested kits, some decades old. 

“The work that was done across the nation in testing and linking to some of these serial offenders, I think, brought the focus back on the need for getting the kits tested,” she said.

As reported by the Attorney General’s Office, “Clearing the backlog and testing the kits has helped solve at least 21 sexual assault cases – a number that is not exhaustive and will grow over time. The testing has resulted in more than 2,100 ‘hits’ in the national DNA database, known as CODIS. A hit occurs when a DNA sample matches an individual or another case in the database, which generally consists of offenders.”

“We consider this a good example of government focusing on where it needs to be and employees doing really good work,” Catterlin said.