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3 days ago

👍For 16 years, Mariska Hargitay has been fighting to make sure the evidence collected from survivors of sexual assault doesn't end up forgotten on a shelf. Her End the Backlog campaign has now hit a landmark milestone: all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico now have at least one rape kit reform law on the books.

Hargitay's devotion to this cause began with fan mail. When she started playing Detective Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 1999, survivors of sexual assault began writing to her by the thousands -- disclosing assaults they had never told anyone else about. "I was raped when I was fifteen. I'm forty now and I've never told anyone." Letter after letter, story after story, people revealing something that intimate to someone they knew only as a character on television.

Hargitay understood what that meant -- how desperate survivors were to be heard, believed, supported and healed. Her response was to found the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004. Five years later, she learned about the rape kit backlog, and everything sharpened into focus. Since 2010, End the Backlog has been the foundation's central fight -- building a six-pillar framework for reform, funding training, driving policy changes state by state, and partnering with Michigan prosecutor Kym Worthy to produce the Emmy-winning 2018 HBO documentary "I Am Evidence."

For Hargitay, this work has always been personal. In 2024, she disclosed publicly for the first time that she had been raped by a friend in her thirties -- a fact she had suppressed for decades, processing it slowly, privately, while building one of the most effective survivor advocacy organizations in the country. "I was building Joyful Heart on the outside," she said, "so I could do the work on the inside."

She knew, in other words, exactly what was at stake -- and the backlog she was fighting to end was staggering. In 2009, a Detroit deputy police chief walked into an abandoned warehouse and found black garbage bags and emptied oil drums stuffed with 11,341 rape kits -- some dating back to assaults from the 1980s. All of them untested. All of them forgotten. Detroit was not an aberration.

A 2021 study estimated between 300,000 and 400,000 unsubmitted kits nationally. The federal government spent over $1.3 billion trying to address the problem since 2011. The kits kept piling up anyway -- the result of misguided priorities, resource failures, and a systemic indifference to crimes against women that allowed perpetrators to walk free and reoffend while evidence sat on shelves. In one Detroit case alone, a perpetrator raped at least ten more women while his DNA waited untested in that warehouse.

Over 16 years, End the Backlog built a movement -- identifying tens of thousands of untested kits, funding lab training, lobbying legislators, and driving policy changes in state after state. The campaign developed six pillars of reform as a national framework: mandatory testing of both backlogged and newly collected kits, statewide tracking systems, survivor notification rights, and dedicated funding to make it all work.

Maine became the final piece of the puzzle last month, when Governor Janet Mills committed $267,000 in annual funding to establish a statewide rape kit inventory and tracking system -- becoming the 50th state to enact at least one pillar of reform.

The 50-state milestone is historic -- and it is a floor, not a ceiling. Not every state has enacted all six pillars of reform. The Joyful Heart Foundation estimates that roughly 100,000 untested kits are still out there waiting to be discovered. Every 68 seconds, someone in the United States is sexually assaulted -- meaning new kits are continuously being added alongside the effort to clear the old ones. Hargitay knows this. "We are far from done," she said.

But she also knows what this moment means. "Today marks a watershed moment not only for the State of Maine, but for every survivor who has asked if their rape kit was forgotten, if their truth was abandoned on a shelf, if they have hope of finding justice," Hargitay said. "This did not happen overnight. It happened because survivors spoke their truth. It happened because advocates refused to let urgency become complacency."

To the survivors who have carried this cause, she had these words: "This milestone belongs to you."

To view the status of each state in enacting rape kit reform laws and the number of untested kits still remaining in each state, visit www.endthebacklog.org/#explore_backlog_map

To learn more and support the work of the Joyful Heart Foundation, visit www.joyfulheartfoundation.org

For fictional stories that address rape and sexual violence and offer a helpful way to spark conversations with young adult readers around sexual assault, we recommend "Speak" for ages 14 and up (www.amightygirl.com/speak), "Girl Made of Stars" for ages 14 and up (www.amightygirl.com/girl-made-of-stars), and "The Way I Used To Be" for ages 15 and up (www.amightygirl.com/the-way-i-used-to-be)

For several powerful memoirs by young women who survived and spoke out after sexual assault, we highly recommend "Know My Name: A Memoir" (www.amightygirl.com/know-my-name), "Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir" (www.amightygirl.com/notes-on-a-silencing), and "I Have The Right To" (www.amightygirl.com/i-have-the-right-to), recommended for older teens and adults

To teach younger children -- girls and boys alike -- about asserting their own boundaries and respecting the boundaries of others, we highly recommend "Let's Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent, and Respect" for ages 4 to 7 (www.amightygirl.com/body-boundaries) and "Consent (for Kids!)" for ages 6 to 10 (www.amightygirl.com/consent-for-kids)

There is also a helpful guide for teens on topics such as consent and coercion, "Real Talk About Sex and Consent: What Every Teen Needs to Know," for ages 13 and up at www.amightygirl.com/real-talk-about-sex-and-consent

And if you know a teen girl struggling after sexual abuse or trauma, “The Sexual Trauma Workbook for Teen Girls: A Guide to Recovery from Sexual Assault and Abuse” may help at www.amightygirl.com/sexual-trauma-workbook-girls ... See MoreSee Less