Last spring, the Oregon Legislature passed two bills reforming how the state handles cases of sexual assault. One struck down the statute of limitations in cases of sexual assault, allowing victims more time to come forward; the other mandated that Oregon’s huge backlog of rape kits finally be processed. In April, almost 3,000 untested kits—some dating back 10 years—were shipped to a lab in Salt Lake City to be tested. In October, 33 came back with DNA matches to perpetrators in a national criminal database.
Sam’s kit wasn’t one of these. Sam, who uses they/them pronouns and whose real name we aren’t printing, was sexually assaulted a little over a year ago at a house show in Portland. The Mercury reported on their story earlier this year [“His Word Against Mine,” Feature, Sep 28, 2016]. After the assault, Sam says they went to a hospital, where a rape kit was administered. After most of the evidence collection was complete, a police officer questioned them—an experience Sam describes as more like an interrogation than an interview.
“I said, at the time, that I didn’t want to press charges because I was terrified of doing so,” says Sam. But eventually, they changed their mind and contacted the police. “I called the detective I spoke to at the hospital about a week or so after the matter, telling him I actually did want to press charges,” says Sam. “I think he passed my case along to someone else because when I went to the police station to follow up, I spoke to two different male detectives.”
Despite going through the process of reporting the assault, undergoing evidence collection, and repeatedly trying to press charges, says Sam, “No follow-up with my kit ever happened.”