GARY SIMS: What we're trying to do with sexual assault cases is to let the victims know that we think their cases are important. One of the real problems was that evidence in rape cases often wasn't getting to the crime lab.
MEG ACEVES: The backlogs are huge at police agencies, and kits don't get processed.
JULIE RENFROE: RADS stands for Rapid DNA Service, and in order to address the growing issue of thousands of sexual assault kits in backlogs, this program was developed in order to address that need. And we have a goal of completing analysis within 15 days.
MEG ACEVES: It doesn't preclude the traditional testing of the kit. The nurses collect extra swabs to be sent directly to the laboratory. It's like a first pass where every case that comes through that hospital is being looked at. What makes it rapid is the technology. Traditionally, we would look at one case at one time. And now we're able to analyze up to 20 cases at one time.
GARY SIMS: We were able to develop an alkaline differential extraction procedure. So it allows us to do in about a half a day what used to take about a day and a half.
JULIE RENFROE: The victim's, unfortunately, been through this tragic experience. Another tragedy would be to have the case not move forward because they're waiting for DNA that was never done. We're able to provide an immediate service to that victim and let them know it's important, and we want it to be looked at in a timely manner. The best case scenario is a profile is uploaded to CODIS, it matches to an offender or an arrestee, and we're able to provide that name to an investigator.
GARY SIMS: It gives us a much better shot at identifying a suspect and doing a prosecution and getting justice for the victims.
