[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLK167IhHaY[/youtube]
Text transcript of Heather’s statement:
I just listened to an echo-chamber of grandstanders ranging from some rape victim muling for the system to Mariska Hargitay to AG Loretta Lynch to Vice President Joe Biden at the New York DA’s office mislead the public — as these institutional advocates and politicians are wont to do — about the “progress” of the rape kit “backlog”.
Here are a few lies the U.S. government has continued to proliferate as a way of historically revising this systemic failure:
Misleading rhetoric #1: The U.S. has a several thousand rape kit “backlog”.
Truth: It is not a “backlog”. Backlog supposes that these kits were in a queue in a crime lab waiting for testing. In fact, rape kits are found off-site in property rooms: ignored rapes.
Misleading rhetoric #2: The reason the U.S. has a several thousand rape kit “backlog” is due to lack of funding to test rape kits.
Truth: In the last decade, the Department of Justice has allocated, through the Debbie Smith act (named after a rape victim), OVER A BILLION DOLLARS to jurisdictions all over the country toward testing criminal evidence. Where did this money go? Why are cities like Detroit begging for private funding to prosecute rapists?
Misleading rhetoric #3: Testing rape kits will end the “backlog” ONCE AND FOR ALL.
Truth: Yes, at this moment in time, jurisdictions can “come forward” and “make a change” by testing their “backlog” of rape kits because they know they will get free PR from the government protecting media who will showcase them “doing the right thing”. However, until jurisdictions feet are held to a fiscal and public shaming fire through lawsuits (Harvey City, Illinois and Memphis, TN and soon San Francisco, CA) for their failures to investigate, arrest, and prosecute rapists, jurisdictions can constitutionally continue to do whatever they want to. Meaning they can go right back to ignoring the crime of rape. Which they are incentivized to do because police departments are financially motivated and this crime, unlike the “war on drugs” is not a profitable one.