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$180 billion spending bill. >> why don't we start legislating again? >> reporter: but the rape kit relief fund spelled victim to the dysfunction with both sides sniping about amendments and vote thresholds and no discussion of justice for rape victims, the spending bill was pulled. >> this is the way the senate operates now. i wish it didn't, but it does. >> reporter: the detroit county prosecutor has made it her mission to clear the untested rape kits. in the first 1600 she had tested, she found 127 serial rapists. swigart being one of them. >> these rapists from the 1600 that we had tested o...

Piece of this. tens of millions of dollars included in the commerce justice science bill to help end the national backlog of untested rape kits. what do you know about that? >> well, when i looked into that, the number i found was $36 million more than the department of justice had asked for. to try to deal with this. not every problem can be relieved by throwing money at it. this might be a case where, in fact, that is an option that lawmakers have. you give more resources and those rape kits get a chance to be processed in a far faster way than being kind of in a limbo for years at a time. t...

These women were in the entertainment industry. some were models and some were actressed. are their careers going to be destroyed if they make an allegation against a famous powerful guy? so, i think it's a big factor. >> now the issue is also what can happen at this point. obviously there has now been damage to bill cosby's career and legacy. a few cancellations but he is continuing with his tour. but the issue of proof is another big question. rape kits in these incidents happened and even after that there is not proof. here is what janice had to say about that. >> look at how it's blowing u...

That would continue in the college years. so how he could ignore that is just really beyond me. >> why is it hard to get data on sexual assault on rape? >> well, first of all, you have to get over the societal, the fact that rape victims are made to feel that it is their fault, somehow, as opposed to other victims of crime. there a difficulty in reporting, in that many times these crimes are pushed aside by police. police don't follow through with prosecuting or attempting to prosecute rape, a lot of times. we know that 22% of police departments have problems with rape reporting statistics. ra...

>> saw it on the tv and called. otherwise her case would have -- >> assumed they tested it in a file somewhere and could link the cases together. but they hadn't tested it. >> why isn't this fixed. >> for memphis which has that number of rape kits you heard, they want $5.5 million to do this and do it right. it's a substantial sum and, you know, you spoke to this issue accurately. there are a variety of accounts of where this problem came from. shuffling off the workload year after year, mayor wharton from memphis told us he thinks there's a sexism component. i think he's trying to address thi...