Mimi Walters
U.S. Rep. Mimi Walters (R-CA) recently told the Ripon Advance that a goal of her legislation to protect the rights of sexual assault survivors, which won unanimous approval in the House with bipartisan support, is to create guidelines that states can follow to eliminate a patchwork of conflicting laws.
“My hope is that when this legislation becomes law on a federal level that other states will look at what we have done and we will get state laws that are more in unity and consistent throughout the country,” Walters told the Ripon Advance in a recent interview.
The Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act, H.R. 5578, ensures that sexual assault survivors in federal criminal cases have a right to a sexual assault evidence collection kit without being charged. It also requires that survivors be notified in writing 60 days before the kits are destroyed, and allows survivors to request preservation of the kits. Survivors must also be informed of important results from their forensic examinations, including a DNA profile match or toxicology report.
Rape kits are medical kits used to collect evidence from the body and clothing of a victim of rape or sexual assault. Kits that have been tested by crime labs have proven vital to successful prosecutions of sexual assault crimes.
Many rape kits, however, have not been tested in a timely manner and a backlog of several hundred thousand kits exists across the nation. When the White House unveiled its Sexual Assault Kit Initiative in 2015 to help communities accelerate testing of rape kits, it estimated that a 400,000 rape kits had been back-logged in law enforcement storage rooms and crime labs across the country.
Another aspect of the legislation establishes a joint working group to be convened by the attorney general and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on best practices regarding the care and treatment of sexual assault survivors and the preservation of forensic evidence. The working group would be required to report its findings to Congress within two years.
The bill also would allow grants administered by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Crime Victims Fund to be made available for states to disseminate written notices of survivors’ rights under state law. Different statute of limitations and rules on destroying rape kits exist in different states.
“Every state is different in the way they treat sexual assault survivors, but our goal is to get conformity throughout the country,” Walters said.
Walters teamed up with U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), the highest-ranking female Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, to advance the Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act. They won the support of Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).
Support for the bill also came from outside groups like RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, and Rise, a non-profit organization that advocates for legal rights for sexual assault survivors.
Walters said that she first became aware of the inconsistencies in federal and state statutes regarding sexual assaults from Amanda Nguyen, founder of Rise. Nguyen, a deputy White House liaison at the U.S. Department of State, founded the organization after she faced major obstacles with trying to prevent her own rape kit from being destroyed in Massachusetts.
“She came here to meet with me and talk to me about her story and to see if we could get some legislation in place that would give consistency to the laws when it comes to sexual assault and come up with some ideas of what we could do to protect victims,” Walters said. “This is a first good start in addressing the various concerns and issues with sexual assault survivors and it is a great foundation to build on.”
The House passed the Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act on Sept. 6 after the Senate passed a similar bill in May. Legislators are now working to reconcile the two pieces of legislation by making a technical change before sending it on to the president for his signature, which will likely occur after the November elections, Walters said.
“It was unanimous in our House and unanimous in the Senate. I can’t see the president not signing it into law,” Walters said.