KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Editor's note: The names of sexual assault victims cited in this article have been changed to maintain their anonymity.
After years of living tethered to trauma, court dates provide a beacon of hope for survivors of sexual assault. That is, until a global pandemic upended time.
“Having to tell a victim their trial date is not going to happen, it’s going to get pushed back, is really difficult,” said Erin House, a special assistant attorney general with Kalamazoo County.
Like most other aspects of life, the coronavirus disease 2019 has paralyzed county courts, delayed scheduled cases, and left victims mired in depths of uncertainty. The lull in litigation is especially problematic for House and her small team of legal and mental health professionals, who investigate unsolved sexual assault cases in Kalamazoo County.
Their state-funded project, Kalamazoo County’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, has reopened more than 200 cases, and right now 12 of those cases are pending in Kalamazoo District or Circuit Court. Two sets of trials are tentatively rescheduled to July. Even those dates, however, are subject to the whim of an unpredictable virus.
“It’s very difficult for victims,” House said. “There’s always some distrust, and a feeling of, is this going to get postponed so many times it’s going to get canceled.”
Living with trauma
For the victims involved in the initiative, which is often called SAKI, this skepticism began long before COVID-19 stalled their court cases. The statewide project unearths crimes that happened years if not decades ago, to help those who have learned to suffer in silence.
“After I was raped, I tried to get help but I was treated poorly as if this was somehow something I chose to happen or brought upon myself,” said Molly, a former initiative client who was assaulted six years ago by an acquaintance at the age of 19. “I stopped talking with my friends. I became detached from the people that loved me most. I started to self-harm. I dealt with an unfamiliar depression and darkness that had not been there before.”
Molly reported her case to the police, but for years, it lay dormant, until a member of the county team reached out to her about reopening the investigation.
“When my SAKI team came to my door to notify me that my case could be reopened, I really didn't know what to think. So many crazy emotions came to the surface. Anger, embarrassment, sadness and then a bit of hope,” Molly said.
That sense of hope, for restorative justice spurred by the revival of a neglected legal case, is a hallmark of many investigations by the initiative.
“Some people say I don’t think you should contact those people and reopen what happened, but we find that no one really forgets,” House said.
The discovery
The Kalamazoo team formed in May 2017, eight years after the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office discovered 11,341, untested, sexual assault kits stockpiled inside a police department warehouse. Each of the kits represented a reported rape, some dating as far back as 1984.
In a sense, the kits served as living memories. Collecting victim’s hair strands, nail follicles, or clothing as evidence, they froze scenes of assault in time and preserved them for years to come.
Victims are encouraged to supply their physical samples, all of which can expose traces of assailants' DNA, as part of a forensic exam in the immediate wake of their assault. If the victims decide to initiate an investigation, law enforcement can then submit their kits to a lab for analysis. They can then run the results through a database of existing DNA called the CODIS system, and ultimately use the evidence to link known felons with sexual assault crimes.
“The samples taken from kits can be matched with individuals already in CODIS,” said Kalamazoo Township Detective Sgt. Larry Haynor. “The kits provide huge certainty, normally.”
Oftentimes, a single box of DNA evidence matches suspects to multiple crime reports, revealing not just one rape but a much more staggering picture of repeated assault. If successfully tested, one kit can catalyze the conviction of a serial rapist who’s roamed free for years.
“We know that most men would never sexually assault a woman ever, but the ones who will, will do it over and over and over again,” House said.
Despite the prosecutorial potential of those kits, the 2009 discovery in Wayne County made clear that many never made it past the warehouse of police departments where victims first reported their assaults. That meant more than 3,000 victims in Michigan endured the gruesome process of not only recounting their rape to investigators, but also plucking samples of their body to use as evidence in a case that ultimately never materialized.
“To me, the rape kit backlog is the clearest and most shocking demonstration of how we regard these crimes,” said actress and domestic violence activist Mariska Hargitay in her 2019 movie "I Am Evidence." The film documented the rape kit backlog through the perspective of victims, prosecutors, and law enforcement agencies.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said, “They were violated in the most intimate of ways, and nobody gives a damn."
Kalamazoo test kits
The problem of abandoned, sexual assault investigations is pervasive in states all across the country. But because of its scope, the discovery in Michigan engendered widespread outrage and sparked a nationwide call to action. Eventually the Bureau of Justice Assistance launched the federal Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, prompting local jurisdictions to immediately address their rape kit backlogs.
Following a statewide investigation, prosecutors found similar sexual assault kit stockpiles in a number of local Michigan police departments.
Kalamazoo County law enforcement agencies accounted for 180 of these kits, one of the larger collections in Michigan, House said.
The reason the kits went untested for so long is convoluted. In a handful of cases, police harbored enough evidence to charge the suspect without the kit, so they deemed it “unnecessary for prosecution,” said Haynor, a 29-year veteran of the Kalamazoo Township Police Department, which housed some of the forensic exams.
But by and large, many of the neglected evidence kits represented incomplete or untouched investigations.
“I think that anytime you talk to a victim of a sexual assault, trying to explain to them our entire process in a matter of minutes we’re going to spend with them, trying to get all of the information we need in that short amount of time, that probably leads to a miscommunication or misunderstanding between police and victim,” Haynor said.
For Jane, another former initiative client, that disconnect had lifelong implications. After being raped at the age of 18, Jane said the process of reporting her assault to an anonymous, local law enforcement agency was worse than the assault itself.
“It is not the actual assault that periodically pops in my head, it is the moment I looked the officer in the eye when telling him details about my assault and I could tell that he didn’t believe me,” Jane said. “Because of the officer's reactions and demeanor changes, I began to feel that I was at fault for what happened to me that night.”
For House, the general trend of untested kits is endemic to our culture’s misunderstanding of sexual assault trauma and the anecdotal evidence that accompanies assault.
In many cases, House said, police would reach out to victims immediately after their reported rape, giving them a deadline to decide whether or not they wanted to pursue an investigation. Many of the victims, frozen by fear and facing threats from their perpetrators, did not deliver an answer in time and police deemed them “uninterested in prosecution,” House said.
“Now we know with trauma that it’s too much to ask someone, within days or weeks or even months after traumatic events happen, do you want to go to court and testify against this?” House said.
“It is not the actual assault that periodically pops in my head, it is the moment I looked the officer in the eye when telling him details about my assault." — Jane
For his part, Haynor said, he doesn’t recall an instance when the Kalamazoo Township Police Department gave sexual assault victims a deadline to prosecute, unless their case was on the brink of expiring its 10-year, statute of limitations. He said he can’t speak for other departments, though he thinks giving such a deadline would be unfathomable.
Regardless of the reason kits went untested, the mere fact that they existed was enough to alarm state lawmakers. In 2015, the Legislature enacted the Sexual Assault Kit Evidence Submission Act, requiring law enforcement officers to submit all sexual assault forensic evidence kits for testing within 14 days of receipt.
That act was a preventative step, but it did little to justify the thousands of crimes that remained unsolved and reduced to a box of untouched evidence.
Task force formed
Michigan counties adopted the task of reviving those cases. The Kalamazoo County Prosecutor's Office, in partnership with the Michigan Department of Attorney General and the YWCA of Kalamazoo, designated a multidisciplinary team to review each kit. Based on the results, the team would decide whether or not to reopen an investigation.
House and her team’s efforts resurrected troves of evidence that, at the very least, shed light on many unanswered questions. Reopening old cases, however, left the group with yet another, ethical conundrum: whether to contact victims.
“It’s a big national debate, because we don’t want to reopen trauma,” House said. “You could have a blanket rule, that you’re going to tell every person whose kit got tested. But what if there’s no way anyone can be charged?”
Ultimately, House said, her team used the victim’s present situation as a guiding principle in their decision. While some of the victims had moved on from their assault and did not want to open old wounds, many others still craved closure.
In certain cases like Jane’s, that closure came in the form of a simple conversation with House and her team.
“I soon realized after multiple meetings with the SAKI team that the testing of my kit was a blessing,” Jane said. “For the first time, I was able to openly talk about the events. I was assured repeatedly that what happened was in fact rape and that it was not my fault in any way. They assured me that I did not deserve it and that they understood that I did what I had to in order to make it stop. All of the doubts in my head that I had lived with for the last 10 years were erased.”
Other victims, like Molly, pursued the more precarious route of prosecution.
The most difficult part of the investigation for many is the photo lineup. House and her team present victims with pictures of possible suspects, or photos of the time they were assaulted, in hopes that the images will spur memories of the incident and fill in potential gaps. The process is not only arduous, but agonizing. The photos can trigger a phenomenon psychologists call “flashback trauma.”
“It can make people feel like they are right back in that moment,” House said.
“When I decided to re-open the case I was scared, nervous but so very ready to be strong.” — Molly
The experience manifests itself in different ways for different people. In one instance, House said, she showed a woman a picture of herself when she was 12 years old, at the time of her assault, and the woman collapsed on the floor in tears. On another occasion, the flashback trauma prompted a victim to run out of the room crying.
The heart-wrenching memories unraveled in the investigation culminate when it comes time to testify in court. For the cases that make it to trial, victims must recount their most dreadful experiences not only to a jury but to the very person they’ve spent most of their lives fearing: their perpetrator. But at that point, House said, many of her clients are ready. Mentally confronting their experience allows them the opportunity to reclaim an identity that’s been systematically robbed of them.
“When I decided to re-open the case I was scared, nervous but so very ready to be strong like the people fight for me as well as strong for any female or male who is violated in any way,” Molly said.
In Molly’s case, the perpetrator pleaded guilty and was convicted, emancipating her from a once perennial nightmare.
“I felt so thankful and happy to finally know that the man who raped me had been held accountable and would have to pay for what he did to me and my life,” she said.
Right now, however, with court cases on hold, dozens of other victims can’t yet have this closure.
The hiatus known as COVID-19 has elicited mixed reactions from victims.
Because trials often induce a flood of anxiety for sexual assault survivors, some are actually relieved they have more time to mentally prepare. But for almost all victims, a lingering distrust of a system that’s wronged them in the past is now compounded by yet more waiting time.
Delayed cases
“I’m concerned about how long we can string people along before we can say I’m just done with it,” House said.
The psychological impacts of delaying decades-old court cases intersect with more tangible, safety concerns.
“The fact is, delays typically help defendants, and are more likely to lead to cases to get dismissed.” — Erin House, special assistant attorney general
Rapists who have managed to evade punishment for so long are just now confronting the threat of prison. The pandemic offers them a wealth of time to reassert their power over victims through verbal or physical intimidation.
The situation has already aroused one case of witness interference, House said. It has also given the defense more time to build their case, and could eventually push some of the team's older cases to the brink of exhausting their statute of limitations.
“The fact is, delays typically help defendants, and are more likely to lead to cases to get dismissed,” House said.
Perhaps more disruptive than the court delays, House said, are the social distancing restrictions on human contact. The rules have limited the team’s ability to communicate with clients, something House fears will interrupt the healing process and erode the trust they’ve worked so hard to build.
"The more time that passes, sometimes the less likely people would want to go forward," she said.
Trapped in the process of healing
Sexual assault crimes are intimately dehumanizing in a way that makes them inescapable. Court dates provide not just comfort, but liberation.
“You are going to be in literally the same situation if you ever want to have a relationship again,” House said.
Many survivors have managed to bury away the memories of their assault, but not the trauma associated with those memories. Reviving their case denudes the lingering, emotional fault lines. The ability for the team's clients to confront this anguish hinges on a sense of trust that they matter, that they are not forgotten, and perhaps most importantly, that the system works as it should.
As the pandemic rages on, however, sexual assault victims are trapped in the dichotomous process of healing, an interregnum of grief and freedom.
“Victims plan their lives around their perpetrators,” House said. “I think sometimes people forget about the victim, and how they feel.”
Follow Alyssa Hurlbut on Twitter or contact her at alhurlbut@sbgtv.com