Image Credit: Canva
The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in Knox County continues to make significant progress in clearing out their backlog of rape kits, with hopes of having them completely caught up by October.
Officials state that there are now fewer than 20 kits left to be processed, and they have cut the wait time for processing down from 10 months to only 10 weeks. That delay comes from the fact that rape kits must be sent to an out-of-state crime lab for processing.
District Attorney General Charme Allen says that processing the rapes kits is a vital step in solving cases.
Lacy Bradley, Director of Victim Services for the McNabb Center says she anticipates that reports of sexual assault will increase as people begin to regain confidence in law enforcement’s ability to serve justice.
“It’s such a traumatic situation for them, and to have to sit there and live in that for months at a time while you’re waiting on answers, it’s actually prevented people from reporting the assault,” Bradley stated. “I think that means that we will be able to help more people and that we’ll be able to help them in a more timely manner.”
The backlog of rape kits in the state came into the spotlight after the 2022 abduction and murder of Memphis schoolteacher Eliza Fletcher.
Shortly after her murder, a rape kit that had been delayed was processed, identifying her murderer as the suspect in that case. Had the kit not been delayed, he would most likely have been in jail and her life would have been spared.
At that time, Knox County had the second highest number of backlogged kits, with 168 waiting to be processed.
