Human Rights Watch recently released a report stating that as of March 1, Los Angeles County has at least 12,669 untested rape kits that are sitting in storage facilities.
Sarah Tofte, who is a researcher for Human Rights Watch and did this study, called it "a case of major injustice to rape survivors." The kits were never sent for forensic testing.
At least 1,218 of these kits are from unsolved cases in which the attacker was a stranger to the victim. It so happens that 499 kits involve cases that have passed the 10 year statute of limitations for rape in California, thereby making it impossible to prosecute the alleged rapists. If those 499 kits had been opened withing two years of the attack, the statute would not apply. According to this study thousands more untested rape kits were destroyed.
This is incredible considering that the L.A. police and sheriff's departments received millions of federal dollars from the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant, a program set up by Congress in an attempt to do something about the rape kit backlogs.
However, the fact is that the people who receive this money can use it to test any kind of DNA backlog. Los Angeles County did not seem to be using the money it received for rape kits; the county has the largest known backlog in the United States, according to this study.
Sarah Tofte has the following to say: "Los Angeles officials need to move quickly and decisively to catch up and end its reputation, when it comes to prosecuting rape, as a judicial backwater."