I was pretty shocked to read about the case of more than 11 000 untested rape kits that have been gathering dust in a police storage facility in Detroit since 2009. I had never heard about this until recently when it was highlighted by Kim Worthy, a prosecutor from Wayne County, Michigan. Worthy herself is a survivor of rape and is now on a mission to ensure that all of these rape kits get tested.

The reason for the giant backlog is because the kits cost around $1200-$1500 to actually test. However, when a rape victim goes through the three hour ordeal of a rape kit shortly after their awful attack, they would expect that the kit would be made a priority in helping to catch the assailant. Obviously it isn’t. Worthy has managed to get a federal grant of $1 million to try to work through these untested kits, yet so far only around 600 of the ones in Detroit have been completed.

The scariest thing is, after only 600 of the kits had been tested, already indicated is evidence of at least 21 serial rapists. One man, Shelley Brooks, was able to rape and murder five women between 2002 and 2008, while the untested rape kits of his earlier victims lay collecting dust. They could have caught this guy before he murdered five (and possibly more) women. I hope that the Detroits kits all get tested ASAP because this shit is all so fucking wrong.