7 January 4 - 10, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents government and becoming an ad- vocate for sexual assault victims. “One kit on the shelf is too many,” Masters told the Observer in August of 2022. “That’s some- body’s life hanging in the balance. That’s a rapist on the streets who is free and thinking they can vio- late someone else.” Although Dallas may have sent its entire backlog off for testing over the past year, that’s not nec- essarily the case across North Texas. According to a spokesper- son with the Fort Worth Police, the department has sent about 400 sexual assault kits to be tested in 2023, but still have ap- proximately 200 that have not been tested. The Observer reached out to police departments in other large Texas cities, includ- ing Austin, with questions about the number of untested rape kits in their possession but did not receive responses af- ter multiple requests. In September, the Texas Department of Public Safety was awarded more than $3 million in grant funds to reduce a backlog of untested DNA and rape kits. According to a September report from the Texas DPS, “turnaround times for sexual assault kits (SAKs) remain under 90 calendar days for DPS labs across the state.” Additionally, the report notes, older SAKs that have never been processed continue to be handed over to labs for testing. Speaking with the Observer now, more than a year after the last time she spoke to us about the number of untested sexual assault kits in Texas, Masters hasn’t wavered from the belief that she has championed for so long. “I still say that one is too many,” Masters said in a recent interview. “I know we’ve come a long way, and I applaud that, I’m grateful for that, but still, I don’t see the ex- cuse of having any kits on the shelf. I know you tell me it’s about training or funding, or outsourcing the testing to different labs, but having so many kits on the shelf just doesn’t rest well with me, it just doesn’t.” State Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, a Dem- ocrat from Mesquite, authored HB 8. She understands where Masters is coming from and she, too, wants to see the remaining un- tested kits dealt with soon. But she’s willing to acknowledge that reducing the backlog more over the past year is a step in the right direction. Neave Criado, who recently announced she is running for the District 16 state Senate seat against Democrat incumbent Nathan Johnson, said she is encouraged by what cit- ies like Dallas have done so far. She also pointed to House Bill 1729, a 2017 law she spearheaded that enabled anyone applying for or renewing a Texas drivers license to donate $1 to go towards testing backlogged sexual assault kits when discussing the ad- vancements in the cause. “I just got data back that, thanks to the generosity of Texans, we have raised over $5.2 million,” Neave Criado said. She added that such crowdfunding measures should not have to do the heavy lifting for getting older kits tested, but that it’s a sign that the public sees this as a major concern. “The Lavinia Masters Act really made Texas a leader in rape kit reform,” Neave Criado noted. Masters, however, isn’t ready to hang a “Mission Accomplished” banner for the wrongs that have only started to finally be righted. For one, she’s not happy to hear that when faced with the backlog, Dallas Police sent the newest kits out for testing first, giv- ing those a greater priority than the oldest ones. Hearing of Dallas’ approach brought back painful memories of the harrowing waiting game she was forced to endure. “You have to find a balance,” she said. “You can’t say that we [sexual assault victims with older, backlogged rape kits] aren’t a pri- ority. This time next year, you could have an- other thousand rape kits from victims that come forward, and what happens then? The new cases now will be the old cases then.” Although Dallas police do not currently have any backlogged kits waiting to be sent out for testing, the department is still wait- ing on the results for hundreds of them. For their part, a DPD spokesperson told us “the testing of all kits is of the utmost importance and will be done to completion.” There’s also the matter of how to keep the progress moving. The more distance that each passing year puts between the pan- demic and the present is helpful in just about any walk of life. That seems especially true when it comes to rape kit testing, thanks to an increase in the staffing and funding that many agencies say wasn’t the case in 2020. The state recently reauthorized the Deb- bie Smith Act, which aims to help police col- lect and test sexual assault kits in a timely manner, while also improving the capacity of state and local prosecutors to try such cases. But progress in 2023 aside, Masters wants to know about what the future might look like should the world find itself in yet another set of “unprecedented circum- stances.” “Nobody expected COVID to hit, but who’s to say COVID or something like it won’t hit us again?” Masters asked. “I went into a panic because COVID happened. I thought ‘what about all those victims of sex- ual violence?’ I knew kits were not going to get tested, but rapists aren’t afraid of COVID or any other sort of pandemic.” AP Photo/Pat Sullivan Texas has seen some improvement in lowering the number of backlogged sexual assault kits. 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