Mr. Speaker, the way we treat the victims of rape in this country is a crime. Evidence that is collected at crime scenes often sits for years, sometimes beyond the statute of limitations, completely untouched by human hands. When that victim goes into a hospital emergency room, frequently they sit in triage with dozens of other people for hours at a time waiting to be examined by someone with no experience in such cases. With this legislation, we change both of those things.
More than 350,000 rape kits, evidence, sits on warehouse shelves throughout the country. We had as many as 16,000 in New York City, until the city began its own program of trying to analyze that evidence.
The technology exists, quite frankly, to match victims' DNA collected at crime scenes with those of criminals. We can make hits and we can often put people away; 154 cold cases have resulted in cases being solved, and in 204 more cases, we know who did it. And now it is just a matter of finding that perpetrator of a crime.
Can you imagine being a person who has been victimized in that way, having that crime scene created, having the evidence taken in the most invasive of ways, only to learn that it is sitting and sitting and sitting without any effort to analyze it.
Why do we have this problem? One word, money. Now the Federal Government, for the second time in this House we are passing legislation to deal with that backlog, $75 million over the next 5 years.
For those of us who have become concerned that in the past money has been grabbed by the States, never makes it to the city, this allows cities to make direct applications. This is an opportunity for us to bring justice to thousands of women. This is an opportunity for us to allow women who have been victimized by rape not to be victimized a second time by a system that does not pay enough attention to it.
I would point out to my colleagues that one of the indexed crimes is going up while all the others is going down, and that is crimes against women, rape. That is because people who perpetrate rape, we know, do it again and again and again and again. One crime we solve may stop seven women from being victimized in the future. That is why these provisions are so important.
We all see DNA evidence through the lens of our own interests. I see it as both what my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), says and through my lens as someone who cares about civil liberties, but also wants these crimes solved.
