A new system in Virginia will allow survivors, law enforcement, labs and hospitals to track rape kits online throughout the entire investigative process.
Attorney General Mark R. Herring and the Department of Forensic Science are launching Virginia’s first-ever statewide PERK tracking system, a comprehensive electronic guide that will track the status and location of a PERK kit at any given moment.
“In years past, survivors often had no idea whether their kit had actually been tested, and we found out it often hadn’t been, which is so disrespectful to a survivor and really undermined trust in the system,” said Attorney General Herring in a press release. “We’ve made so much progress over the last few years to empower survivors, improve communication and transparency, and implement trauma-informed, survivor-centered, practices, and this new system is going to be yet another big step forward.”
The system will cost about $100,000, all of which is covered by a $2 million Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) grant secured in 2017 by Attorney General Herring and DFS, the release says.
The PERK system tracks the kits at each step in the process, from their distribution as uncollected kits to collection sites, including hospitals, through collection, transfer to law enforcement, submission to the laboratory for analysis, and return to the law enforcement agency for storage.
All agencies handling kits will be required to update the status of each kit, and survivors may use the system to check the status of the analysis of their kits at any time.
The system will also notify law enforcement when collected kits have not been submitted timely for analysis, according to the release.
The system also includes important protections to ensure survivors’ privacy. No personal information will be stored in the system, access will be restricted to only the information a particular user might need and the kits will be monitored solely by their tracking number, according to the release.
“This is a crucial step in the direction of establishing systems-based responses that are trauma-informed and healing-centered in their approaches to serving sexual assault survivor,” said said Jonathan Yglesias, Policy Director of the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance, in a press release.
Five organizations have been using the system since a test launch in June. The Department of Forensic Science will conduct trainings with all agencies that handle PERK kits before the system becomes mandatory next summer.
