North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein called for more funding to process sexual assault testing kits at a joint press conference with Republican state legislators Tuesday.
An audit of sexual assault testing kits by local law enforcement agencies in 2017 found a significant backlog — more than 15,000 kits were untested. In 2019, the bipartisan Survivor Act was signed into law, which mandated that all testing kits be examined.
Kits prior to 2018 have been outsourced to vendor labs. Stein said the first year after the Survivor Act became law, his office witnessed a 125% increase in the number of sexual violence testing kits submitted. Although the state has made “incredible progress,” the work is not nearly done, Stein said. He vowed to eliminate the backlog by 2023. Hence, the new request of a one-time appropriation of $9 million and the addition of 12 scientists — six specializing in DNAs and six in other disciplines — for testing the older kits.