The story of a cold-case rape investigation in Michigan demonstrates a wide spectrum of failures surrounding the nation’s handling of sexual assault cases, including a federal grant program that was intended to help law enforcement agencies test old rape kits and investigate the cases, USA Today reports. A three-part series details the slow process of justice in a case in Lansing, Mich. In 2012, a teenager named Joslyn Phillips accused an acquaintance named Marshawn Curtis of rape. A series of breakdowns allowed Curtis to remain free for years after that report. The federal Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, launched in 2015, promised to deliver justice and put rapists behind bars. A USA Today investigation found that even though the program has awarded nearly $350 million in grants – including $5.5 million to the Michigan State Police – countless survivors didn’t get that outcome.
In Lansing, the effort led to Phillips’ rape kit being tested for DNA, four years after the fact. Curtis was not arrested or charged until years after that – and after he had been accused of rape a second time, by a woman in Georgia named Emily Zaballos. The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative also helped fund the regional task force that led to him being charged and convicted. While Curtis ultimately was imprisoned in Michigan, he has not been charged in Georgia. The Lansing victim had a rape kit done, but it wasn’t sent for testing, becoming part of the national backlog that languished for years. Working Phillips' case in Michigan, Detective Annie Harrison only found out about a rape complaint against Curtis in Georgia because the kit there had been tested. In other states, that might not have happened. The fact that DNA from a Georgia kit matched evidence in one of her cases was shared with Harrison, who investigates Michigan cases with previously untested kits as part of a special task force.
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