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Welcome back to a special edition of New Jersey Power and Politics. I'm Walt Kane. Reaction has been pouring in after we aired a prime time documentary this week exposing problems with the way New Jersey treats survivors of sexual assault survivors telling us law enforcement did not take the crimes against them seriously. And they say the proof is that prosecutors chose not to even open their rape kits to test for DNA in the day. Since our special air. There's now a bipartisan call for the system to change in a written statement. New Jersey State Senator Vin Go Paul says the brave individuals who relive the trauma of their assault during a forensic examination deserve answers and the assurance that their kits will be tested in a timely fashion. He adds testing all kits is critical in cases involving serial offenders to ensure justice for survivors. Gopal was quickly joined by Senate minority leader Anthony Bucco. In his statement, Buco said when victims are forced to wait months and sometimes even years to have their rape kits tested their justice is being denied. Buco adds failing to promptly process these kits only prolongs the trauma felt by rape and sexual assault survivors. He says addressing this alarming backlog is critical Gopal and Buco are not the first state lawmakers to propose this. Two years ago. Former Senator Nia Gill wrote legislation that would require New Jersey to test all kits released to law enforcement but her legislation never made it out of committee and Gill is no longer in office. Joining me now to talk about these new developments is one of America's leading advocates for sexual assault survivors. Ilsa connect director of policy and advocacy for the Joyful Heart Foundation. Ailsa. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me first reaction to uh both a Democrat and a Republican. Now in New Jersey saying we should be testing all of these rape kits. This is what you've been fighting for for a long time. Well, well, they're absolutely 100% correct. Testing all kits is very widely accepted, best practice across the country. Um By doing this, you will catch serial offenders, take dangerous people off the streets, bring justice to survivors, bring them answers and make them feel that they matter and that what happened to them matters. The vast majority of states now test every kit that a survivor gives consent to test a handful of states including New Jersey. Still allow prosecutors to choose not to test a kit even if the survivor wants to test it. Do you have any sense of why some states still do this is this about money. The cost of testing the kits, we really don't accept money as an excuse for not testing kits because many states have figured it out. 37 states. In fact, now test all kits that are collected, reported to a connected to a reported crime. Um So it's a, it's a matter of priority, of course, states have budgets, but when you look at the cost of testing kits, it's very tiny compared to most state budgets. And in fact, you save money by testing kits that's been discovered in communities over and over again. You know, when you take dangerous people off the streets, these guys are committing crimes over and over again and they commit all kinds of crimes. They're not specialists, they commit burglary and you know, Carjacking domestic violence, it runs the gamut. So they really are costing communities money. There's so much misinformation about this issue. Uh When you talk to opponents of testing, they talk a lot about wanting to protect the victim's privacy. They say we should not be testing kits without a survivor's consent, but we're not talking about those kits. Correct. I mean, those kits were never released to law enforcement to begin with. We're only talking about law enforcement testing the kits that survivors released to them because they wanted them tested. Correct. Correct. Absolutely correct. Survivors have an option when they have evidence collected. This is an option given to them under the violence against Women Act to have the evidence collected and held for and state by state different amounts of time. Some states have said 20 years, some have said 50 in between if they decide at a later date that they want to report the crime and have the kit tested. So there's always that option. The survivors who go through the examination and say they do want to participate in the criminal justice process and they do want their kits to be tested, should have them tested. Why would we collect evidence from a survivor from their body which has become a crime scene and, and then do nothing with it. Um, it's really quite astounding and victims in that situation are asking for their kids to be tested. Are you optimistic that maybe the tide is turning here in New Jersey as it has in some other states? I am, I am always an optimist in this issue because I know that in the end people will come around to do what's right. Um Sometimes it just means that the right person has to hear about it. And like some of the quotes that you've been reading will say, well, I didn't know we weren't doing this. This is, it's crazy, you know, um, people when they hear about it and finally understand it really do get on the right side of it. Um And one thing I'll just say, you know, 37 states have already done this. It's not, um, sort of, you know, I, I it's proven it's a proven thing now that this action is the best route to take both for public safety and for survivors rights. It certainly looks like that is the direction that, uh, the nation has been going and we'll see if New Jersey goes in that direction as well. Ailsa connect. Thank you so much for being with us. Ailsa is the director of Policy and Advocacy for the Joyful Heart Foundation. Our in our investigation has also gotten the attention of the international community which says New Jersey's treatment of rape survivors is actually a human rights issue. It's horrendous that they think that some action is being taken when it actually isn't. The International Human Rights Clinic at Rutgers Law School says what our investigation uncovered is nothing less than a human rights violation. The failure to um take seriously a claim of rape and to actually devote the resources to investigate that rape within a timely fashion violates the rape victims. Uh Human rights. The clinic is asking the United Nations to investigate what it calls the deliberate failure to test DNA in rape kits. We really hope that the work that you're doing, the work that we're doing, the work that other advocates are doing, really bring this to a fore up until now. We've been talking about the need to test kits. But one of the things that concerns advocates about New Jersey's treatment of rape survivors is that it could also discourage them from coming forward. Even if the system is flawed, though there are some mechanisms in place to make what is always a difficult process. A little bit easier. We'll take a look at that when our special edition of New Jersey, Power and Politics continues in a moment.

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Welcome back to a special edition of New Jersey, Power and Politics. I'm Walt Kane. For the past half hour, we've been looking into New Jersey's treatment of sexual assault survivors treatment, which often makes them feel like they've been victimized all over again. But if you are a survivor of sexual assault and you do want to get DNA evidence collected, you should know that there are some systems in place to make a difficult process a little easier and they tried to make me comfortable. They had, they brought in like an advocate and she was really nice. Like she held my hand through some things I would call it invasive. You know, it's this woman that I've never met before coming in for that reason and she has to look at every inch of your body. These two sexual assault survivors are sharing their experiences undergoing forensic exams, commonly known as rape kits. They say they're doing it in hopes of helping future victims understand exactly what to expect. It starts with a history. They tell us in their own words, what happened during the event. Kristen Crespo is a forensic nurse examiner in Monmouth County and along the way, we would be taking things called specimen swabs and photographs. If the person is ok with us having photographs taken and the swabs would be looking for DNA. The nurses would never say that it would be DNA because we don't know that we would call them a Specimen, but they would be looking for anything that could be left behind on the person from the incident. They're just two cotton swabs doesn't hurt and we would take the swabs and then we put them in our swab dryer boxes for the end of the exam to package everything up. How long does this process typically take? So the process from meeting the patient to then being done with the patient and bringing them back to the emergency department can probably take anywhere from 2 to 4 hours. What are the types of things you do to help, put them at ease and help make it as easy or as painless as possible for them? Well, all of the uh patients are afforded the right to have a confidential sexual violence advocate available to them at the hospital as well. And those women and men are trained to comfort the victim and nurses as well are trained in uh trauma care of patients. The neurobiology of trauma, everything they can do to make that patient's experience less traumatic is what we try to do. Thank you for joining us on this special edition of New Jersey Power. And politics to see our full victims of the system investigation. You can go to News twelve.com and click on Kane in your corner. You'll find that under news 12 original. I'm Wal King. Thank you for watching Eric L corner will be back next week with New Jersey. Power and Politics.

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Should New Jersey lawmakers be doing more to help rape victims? Walt Kane examines the issue in a special edition of New Jersey Power and Politics.

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Power & Politics Special: New Jersey's treatment of sexual assault survivors

Should New Jersey lawmakers be doing more to help rape victims? Walt Kane examines the issue in a special edition of New Jersey Power and Politics.

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