It turns out that St. Joseph County leads the state in rape kits that haven’t been processed.
Statistics say one in every five women will be raped in her lifetime, but many rape kits go unprocessed for a number of reasons.
The South Bend Tribune reports that St. Joseph leads all counties in Indiana with nearly 500 unprocessed kits on backlog. By comparison to the 478 in St. Joseph County, Elkhart County has 79 of them, and Marshall County has a total of 10 that haven’t been processed.
Many are concerned that a backlog of this size hurts the chances for victims to get justice, and the process of having a rape kit done can be traumatic for the victims to begin with.
The St. Joseph County Prosecutor’s office says they are working on the problem.
