I Am Evidence (2017) - full transcript

All I can tell you
is what I remember.

I went straight back to
my bedroom and he was there,

behind my bedroom door.

Debbie Smith:
And he said don't turn around

and don't scream
or I'll kill you.

Woman 1:
I was on a date with a guy.

He was fighting me
and punching me in my face.

Woman 2:
I started screaming

for somebody to help me.

Woman 1: And then
after that, it's a blur.

Woman 3:
They did a rape kit on me.



They took a swab
of my mouth, my vagina.

Woman 4: And I felt like
my body was a crime scene.

I just thought, I'm going to
give them all this information,

and they're just going to go out
in a week and catch him.

Diane Sawyer:
Really stunning news today

about the number of rape cases

police have never
even tried to solve,

not even opening the rape kits.

Male Reporter 1:
In Memphis more than 12,000.

Male Reporter 2:
Louisville has roughly 4,700.

Female Reporter 1: San
Diego police have nearly 3,000.

Female Reporter 2:
Colorado has 6,283.

Woman: In Texas, we had
over 20,000 untested rape kits.

- Untested
- Untested.



Female Reporter:
Never opened, never tested.

It's estimated as many as
400,000 rape kits nationwide.

Some cases may be too old to
prosecute under the statute of limitations.

Woman: I can understand
one city being negligent,

but a nation?

Mariska Hargitay:
For a survivor to come forward,

to muster that courage,

and to then have nothing
done about it.

What are we saying?

Who are we protecting?

We're saying you don't matter.

Woman 5:
I always was told

as a little girl growing up,

"if someone touches you,
you tell, you tell, you tell."

Wow, and nothing happened?

Hargitay:
By not testing the rape kits,

we're saying, "It's okay,
you can do it again."

And part of the terror
of being raped

is knowing that the perpetrator
is still out there.

I am evidence, literally.

My name is on a box, on a shelf,

that has never been tested.

Hargitay: One of my
best friends is from Detroit,

so I used to come
in my early 20s a lot.

So I... I've always had
a deep affinity for this city.

A lot of people are saying,
"You can't do it."

This is the fifth most
violent city in the country,

and people are going,
"Detroit? Really, Detroit?

Sweetheart, there's other places

you'd get a lot further
with than Detroit."

But I say, "Sweetheart you,
that's where we're starting"

A lot of people just don't
know about this problem,

and I was one of those people.

And then you meet
people like Kym Worthy

and you see what she's doing,

you sort of can't help but
say, "What am I doing?

When I first met Kym
four years ago,

Detroit had just discovered
11,000 untested kits.

Kym's commitment to test
every last kit

here in Detroit,
is so remarkable.

I've been playing Detective
Benson on "SVU" for 15 years,

and when I first began, letters
started coming in from viewers.

These men and women
were disclosing to me

their stories of abuse.

And at first, it was a few,
then it was more,

then it was hundreds,
and then it was thousands.

A majority of them included
some version of,

"I've never told
this to anybody before."

And here I was, an actress on
a TV show getting these letters,

and I was immersed
in these issues.

So I educated myself,
and I got involved.

To me, the rape kit backlog

is the clearest
and most shocking demonstration

of how we regard these crimes.

Kym's tireless and relentless
work here in Detroit

is unwavering and unstoppable.

I had absolutely no clue

that people stockpiled
rape kits.

I had no clue
that anyone would do that.

Kym Worthy: I just never imagined
that it was anyplace else than here.

Robert Spada: I was asked
by the Detroit Police Department

to accompany them
to an off site property room.

I went there.
During that time,

I noticed the racks with boxes

with rape kits in them.

And I asked,
"What's in those boxes?"

And they said that those
were old tested rape kits.

But I pulled some of the boxes,

and I realized that there
still was the seal on the kits.

Which would lead you to
believe they had never been tested

if the seal's never been broken.

I was extremely shocked to think
that there was just racks of kits

sitting
in an abandoned warehouse

with windows open
and birds flying around.

He said, "Boss, you're not going to
believe what has happened, or what I saw."

And he said, "I think I saw,"

he said, "I saw
approximately 10,000 rape kits

sitting in this annex
to the property room,"

and that none of us
even knew existed.

We knew about the Detroit Police
Department main property room,

but we did not know
that there were other places

within the department
they were storing evidence.

And so I said, "You've got to be
kidding me," or some words to that effect.

It's so disturbing.

Yep.

So do we know exactly
how long the...

The kits were stored here?

All we know is the day we found
out, which was August of '09.

Wow.

Do we know how many
were stored here?

- All of them.
- All of them.

All of them, yeah.

So it looks like they're in
the process of tearing it down.

You know, once I get
rid of the shock of it,

of we discovered the kits,

but I'm not surprised.

The victims of these...

That are attached to these kits
are overwhelmingly women.

And very few report,

and those that report are
historically treated very badly.

It's not just the fact that nobody
cared about these women.

It's not the fact that they
treated them with no dignity.

It's the fact that they were
violated in the most intimate of ways,

and nobody gave a damn.

Nobody gives a damn
about women in this country.

Okay.

- Let's get on this one.
- Girl: Who are they?

People, human beings.

- Kids: People Mover!
- Going to work.

Ericka:
I was dating a guy,

and for my 21 st birthday,

I said I wanted to have a party.

And we invited all of my family
and all of my friends,

and it was just this big deal
with balloons and cake.

And of course we danced
all across the whole dance floor

all the way back, on the chairs.

And when we got ready to leave,
my boyfriend, he said,

"Yeah, we're
gonna stop at the store,

but I'll catch back up
with you in a few hours."

So his friend said, "Come on,
get in the car, I got you.

We've been around each other
all this time, I got you."

And so we pulled up to a house,
and he start pouring drinks.

So I took a sip of my drink,
and I took another sip.

And I remember...

I remember putting my head
on my arm on the...

on the armrest.

And “wen...

And then I remember
everything just being dark,

and I couldn't see...
I couldn't see anything,

and I felt like there was
something around my neck.

And there was somebody
on top of me on this side,

and they were
touching my breasts

and... and kissing on me,

and there was somebody
in between my legs.

And I was...
It was just dark.

And I kept saying stop.

I remember hitting this person,
you know, just saying stop

and trying to get
my legs to be closed.

And when I got home,
I called an ambulance,

and they came and they got me

and they took me
to the hospital.

And that's when
they did the rape kit.

They snatched and they pulled
and nobody comforted me.

When I came out the hospital,
my dad was waiting for me.

We went
to the detective's office,

and my dad was in full dad mode,

said,
"What's gonna happen now?"

and you know, "So how long
is this gonna take,

what's the process?"

And the man was kind
of agitated, the officer,

and he said,
"I'm just going to be honest.

Nothing's going to happen."

He said, "We're going
to put this in a file,

and we're going
to put this in a box,

and it'll have
her name on it."

And he said, "I'm not sure
when we will ever get to it,

or if we'll get to it."

And he said, "I can take you
to a storage room right now

full of people
that are before her

that haven't
been tested for years."

He just,
my dad just played some music,

he played some jazz
all the way home,

and we got ice cream.

And my dad said,
"It's gonna be all right, baby."

If you look around Detroit
if you're ever out and about,

and you think about this,

about how much safer
this all could have been.

And how we're going to get to
the point where it's much safer

when we get all these rapists
off the street.

So it's going
to be interesting to see

how when we're
all done with this,

exactly how many people's lives
have been affected.

And, really, you have to factor
in their families

and everyone they
had contact with and,

you know, since the time,

'cause that's gonna be
impossible to track,

but, you know, it's just...
It's just a lot of people,

many more than I think
people realize.

Worthy: From the very
beginning, I felt this way.

We had to bring justice
to these victims,

and even the cases beyond
the statute of limitations.

I knew I wanted
to get them all tested.

DNA testing can identify
an unknown perpetrator.

It can confirm the presence
of a known suspect.

It can affirm a survivor's
account of their assault.

It can connect the suspect
to other crime scenes,

even those in other states
and jurisdictions.

It can help solve other cases

that may not even be
sexual assaults.

It can also,
and this is very important,

exonerate the innocent.

Bottom line,
a rape kit can bring justice.

So all of these people meet for the
first and third Thursday of every month

for at least two hours

to talk about
how we got into this mess.

On DPD's end, I was tasked
with making sure that

we provided what was needed
to make this project work.

And, you know, there was several
things that was dropped in my lap

that I didn't know how I was
going to be able to get through it.

Or looking at the officers that,
you know, investigate these cases,

they were overwhelmed,
stressed out.

How will we bring this
all together?

Dr. Rebecca Campbell:
My job in this project was to

sort of watch this group
come together,

to document all of the decisions
they had to make.

You know, when you find out
that you have 11,000 kits,

what do you do?

It happened over decades.

What was
the decision-making process

that said,
with limited resources,

I'm choosing not to send
this kit, but I'll send this kit?

But the decision not to send
that kit was far more common

than the decision
to send the kit.

Sol started piecing this together
in the late '90s, early 2000s.

And then we had
New York City break,

and we had Los Angeles break,

and then the community
I've worked with, Detroit,

where it showed up in the media.

And there was
this huge sort of surprise,

but for those of us who have
been in this movement for a while,

it's like,
"This wasn't a surprise.

They have not been testing
these kits for decades."

In Detroit, certainly
finances were an issue.

It costs money to test a kit.

The money for this in Detroit
was just not there.

But why didn't they take
the money they did have

and put it in this crime?

That's when you have to dig
into this a little bit deeper.

You have to open up
the police reports

associated with the kits
that were not tested.

And when you do that,
that's when you

start getting a much
more complicated story.

Campbell: Detroit is
primarily African-American,

so over 80% of them

were from African-American
residents of the city.

By our best estimates,
most of them were poor,

so we're talking
about poor black women.

It's pretty clear they did
not believe the victims.

They fundamentally
did not believe

what happened
to them was a crime.

They did not believe that what
happened to them merited their attention.

We read police reports
where victims

were called bitches,
ho's, whores, heifers.

They said, "Eh, it's not
really a real sexual assault.

This is not worth
our investigative time,

and it's certainly not worth our
limited resources of testing this kit."

Kalimah Johnson:
I carried the pager.

I was one
of those social workers

that responded
to sexual assaults

when they happened
in the city of Detroit.

And if I get a phone call
from a nurse's aide who says,

"Girl, if you're
in the middle of your lunch,

get down here when you can,"

I knew that I was either gonna
interface with a woman of color,

or a woman who might have
had a substance abuse issue,

and didn't belong to anybody,
if you know what I mean.

But if I got a call
from the doctor,

and they would say,
"Hurry up and get down here,"

it was one of two kind of women.

It was either a white woman

or a black politically connected
woman in the city of Detroit.

Either she was a pastor's
daughter or a politician's daughter

or something like that.

And it was a pattern,
and I'm not saying that...

I'm not saying it happened all
the time, but it was noticeable.

I believe that there's just a...

a lesser sense of value
for women who are black,

that they're just not...
Not human enough

to even be rapeable.

And so these cases
just got thrown to the side

and not thought about
in any particular way.

Worthy: With the darker
pigment of your skin,

your life seems
to have less value

in the criminal justice system.
That's true.

You're just taken more
seriously in this country,

in all aspects, if you have
money or if you have influence

or if you have power
or if you have privilege.

- It's a national problem.
- TV Host: Sure, that's right.

There's over 400,000 backlog
untested kits in this country.

Talk to me, though,
about what that means,

the... the... the testing
of these kits.

How you get from testing it
to saying,

"Well, here are the people
that we need to start looking at."

The scientists will take
whatever evidence is in the kit,

the saliva, hair, fibers,

anything to help get
a genetic profile

that can then be loaded
and entered into CODIS.

And CODIS, C-O-D-I-S,
is the DNA national database.

Host: Right.

But there are
two different kind of hits.

It either matches
to a person's profile

already in CODIS,

or it can match
to another case through DNA

from evidence, such as clothing,

even if that person's
identity is unknown.

Host: Yeah.

So now the next critical
step is the investigation

and prosecution of these kits.

Right, and so that next step
is saying,

"All right, well,
let's go find these people

and bring them to justice."

"Let's take each individual
hit, work up a case

the way it should have been
worked up when it first happened."

So you have to still go
find the victim,

you have to find the defendant,

you have to find the witnesses,

any other evidence besides
just the DNA evidence.

And put the case together
the old-fashioned way.

And that... that gets
to all the problems

- that you have with resources.
- Exactly.

You just don't have
enough people.

Exactly. Up until...

Up until a couple
of months ago, we had two.

And contrast that
with the city of Cleveland,

who discovered about
4,000 kits several years ago.

They had 35 investigators.

I think 25 or 35 investigators,

- to our two that we had.
- To two.

Rachel Dissell: In 2009, a guy
named Anthony Sowell was caught,

and he was a serial rapist
and murderer.

And at some point, several women

reported
that he had attacked them.

And there were questions
whether some of those reports

were taken seriously or not.

It ended up when the police
were investigating a report

in late October of 2009,

they went to the house
to look for him,

and in the house, they discovered
the bodies of several women.

In total, it was 11 women who
Anthony Sowell raped and murdered.

After that case, our editors
at the "Plain Dealer"

asked us to really dig in
to how sex crimes were handled.

And a part of that was
the question of rape kits.

We knew that
there were a number of them

related to the Sowell case
that had not been tested.

That part for us was really
difficult to see how many people

had been attacked long after the
evidence was there and hadn't been used.

So we wanted to ask
the larger question.

You know, how many
of these rape kits

here in Cleveland
haven't been tested?

When they were done counting
and sorting through the kits,

they had a little over 4,000

that previously
had not been tested.

'Tim McGinty:
Of course we made mistakes

as a law enforcement community.

We didn't realize the potential

of what sat behind us
in the locker.

In this building were these
untested rape kits gathering dust.

We did not appreciate it.

I was shocked
by how many of these

we got hits or matches on

when we took this unknown DNA,

had no idea who it was,

put it
in the national DNA database

and Ohio's database
with known profiles,

and we got a hit.

Those kits start getting tested,
they start getting results,

and then you have almost
another type of backlog,

an investigative backlog.

Hundreds of new cases
were coming in.

How do you figure out
what to do with them?

How do you figure out which is the
most important one to handle first?

Man:
He's got those three events,

all related close in time.

The DNA evidence that
was able to be collected

from the clothing, from the the
pockets, and off the sports bra

of victim number one
and victim number two.

Dissell: And as the
cases were coming in,

they weren't
really triaging them

to see who was in prison,

who was out on the streets.

And so they got a hit
for a 2000 rape

in which the potential suspect
was James W. Daniel Ill.

And several months went by,

and in that time
before he was arrested,

he raped two other women.

And they had
a surveillance video

that showed part of this attack.

Dissell: This case really
knocked some of the folks

on the task force
back a little bit,

because they were so proud
of what they were doing,

but at the same time, they realized
that they had to prioritize the cases.

And you can see
just how much harm it is

for not having tackled
this in the past.

- We're not keeping up.
- No, we're not keeping up.

People who they became
aware of as a suspect,

they had to ask themselves
the question.

Are they on
the street right now?

Could they attack somebody else?

Man: We're still working
on prioritizing the cases

that are rolling in.

I know that Nicole has a guy
with two cases out on the street.

Nicole DiSanto:
Each of the investigators

has anywhere from 80 to
90 cases on their docket.

And every day,
we get another 20 to 30 hits.

If there's a statue
of limitations about to run,

or if we have a serial offender
who's out on the streets,

those go to the top
of our priority list.

Okay, we have a hit to a suspect

who has been identified
in three cases,

one in '95, one in 1998.

And this third victim that
we're trying to locate and notify

is a hit to a 1997 case.

So we're going to go attempt to
find her at her last known address,

and let her know that we have
new information on her case.

Danielle?

DiSanto:
So the reason we're here

is because of the rape
in January of '97.

What can you tell me
about what you remember?

I lived next door to, like,
a little convenience store.

Okay.

And, um, I met a guy
that went to that store.

I think he asked me if I wanted
to smoke a joint or something.

We went to, I guess, one of
his friend's houses or something.

He grabbed me by my neck,
and he pushed me down.

And I started screaming

for somebody to help me.

And I remember, 'cause
there were people upstairs...

and nobody came down.

He, um...

He started pulling my pants
down, and he grabbed my arms,

and he held them real tight.

And he said, "If you don't shut the
fuck up, I'm gonna beat your ass."

And so I shut up.

And he finished,

and I got up,
and I sat in a chair,

and I just cried and cried.

And I didn't
really know what to do.

And then I started feeling,

I don't know,
like it was my fault.

And that I shouldn't have
put myself in that position.

You know it's
not your fault now, right?

Yeah, I know now.

Robert: All right, the
series of photos here

may or may not contain him
in the photographs.

And try not to pay attention
to anything other than his face.

That one.

How sure are you?

- I'm 100% sure it's him.
- 100%?

- Yeah.
- Okay.

Oh, my God.

If you could just circle him.

- Sorry.
- That's okay.

DiSanto: And I have to let you
know he's not in custody yet.

We are going to try and get him
off the streets as soon as possible.

Danielle: So there's
two of us right now, right?

Two local.
There's a third hit.

So there are three different
DNA hits to this suspect.

Dissell:
I think for us in Cleveland,

one of the most striking things
that we learned

was that far more of
the suspects in these cases

than we ever would have thought

were suspected serial rapists.

We did not expect to find

that a third or more
of the people

were linked to multiple cases.

Most men are not rapists,

but the ones who are perpetrate
again and again and again.

Helena: About four days
after my 17th birthday,

it was in 1996,

I had been given
a Volkswagen Rabbit,

a HEW car.

And I was obsessed with the car.

I washed it constantly.

And I had taken it
to a local car wash.

So I was there, and it was dark.

And as I was washing it,
a man approached me

with a rag over his face,
asking for help.

That man abducted me
at knife point

and had me captive
for about ten hours,

during which time I was
repeatedly assaulted.

He took $20 from my wallet.

He took the money,
and he took my license.

He took the license, he said, so
that he would know where I lived.

And he was very clear
that if I reported,

he would come back and
kill me and kill my family.

He eventually did release me,

and then I went,

and I flagged a police cruiser,

the first cruiser that I saw.

I knew that I had to report.

I knew I couldn't go home,

and even though
I was in a state of shock,

I knew that I had to do
something.

Eventually I was taken
to an area hospital

where the rape kit
was performed.

The process takes several hours.

Open up your legs
like a butterfly, okay?

I'm gonna pull
a few pubic hairs.

Helena:
And a humiliating process,

not only because
of the physical invasion,

but because of the kind of questioning
that was going on at the time.

All of the questions that
I got from law enforcement

were asked with the intention of finding
out what I did to cause the assault.

What was
I doing at the car wash?

Did I know the person
who assaulted me?

I felt blamed,
I felt blamed right away.

My parents are both immigrants.

My mother is from Cuba, and
my father is from Argentina.

And when the assault took place,

they had a lot of held
mistrust for law enforcement,

and an expectation
that we wouldn't be helped.

And they were right
to think that.

Patti Giggans:
That's the American way,

this inequality within
the criminal justice system

when it comes
to people of color,

or the economic classes
and the difference.

So that is so endemic
to our society,

of course it's
going to have an impact,

you know, with police
and police investigation.

Gail Abarbanel:
When we first started,

one of the biggest problems
was the police,

and a lot of other programs
were discouraging victims

from making police reports,

because they felt they would be
mistreated by the police,

and in many cases they were.

County Supervisor: How many rape
kits do you have at Central Storage?

Off the top of our heads,
we could not tell you right now.

Female Reporter: When the
Sheriff's Department finally counted,

they found nearly 5,000 kits
in storage.

300 of them were past
the statute of limitations.

Giggans: And it was very
confusing in the beginning.

We heard that there
were 7,000 kits,

and there were 11,000 kits,
and there were 12,000 kits.

It was fascinating in terms
of the confusion

around
what was really happening.

And then we found out
that kits had been destroyed,

kits had been thrown away.

Steve Cooley: In terms of
the destruction of evidence,

I think that may have occurred

in the L.A. County
Sheriff's Department.

They had, in our view,

misinterpreted
the statute of limitations

and had been
destroying rape kits,

thinking the statute had run
when it hadn't.

Therefore, there were rapists
who were not caught.

And there were survivors
who lived in fear

of maybe the rapist
was going to come back.

Helena: When something
like this has happened

and you don't know
where that person is...

that means they're everywhere.

They are over your shoulder.

They're gonna be inside the
front door when you walk in.

I would come home at night
and open the door

and imagine his hands
coming up to my throat.

I could feel his hands
coming up to my throat.

Going up the stairs
to my room, in my room,

every sound you hear is them
breaking into the house.

I would have
terrible nightmares.

I would wake up each morning
and imagine going downstairs

and finding my family dead.

I was afraid to leave my house.

There was a time during
which I was not functioning.

I was not a functioning person.

And I can't understand...

why I was so unimportant,

what was
so unimportant about me,

that someone couldn't just
take a little bit of their time

and help me find out.

Ericka: I do want to take
the time just to say thank you

for, you know, the things
that you've poured into me

and into my girls.

You know, being
a single mom is not easy.

It's kinda like when you're
going through your journey,

and you don't have resources

or you don't have money
for resources.

Like, "Well, how do I cope?"

Sometimes I'm kinda scared,

because, you know, as a mom
you don't want your kids

to see you as anything flawed
or anything like that.

And in the
African-American community,

you know, we have other myths.

You know, where you can't tell
people what happened to you.

You don't have faith in God.

- Just go to God.
- Just go to God with it

and let it be there.

I mean, this can go back to
slavery how we were forced to,

you know,
carry things in silence.

You know, our pain, our
anguish, all type of stuff.

- I say speak up.
- Right.

If you are going
through something

you don't know
how to get out of it,

don't hold anything in.

Ericka:
After my incident,

I was very depressed.

And I didn't have a reason.

I didn't have a reason to live.

The insecurities
and all of the different fears.

Now it's just an open wound.

I do feel like a big piece
of me was taken away from me.

You know,
I'll never be the same.

Woman:

I will be 32 this year.

That was my 21 st birthday,
so 11 years.

Woman:

No.

I... I wasn't waiting.
I stop...

I gave it up, on that day.

I've never waited,
because I couldn't wait.

I couldn't think about it.

I couldn't even expect anything.

Or I would not, I would not,

I don't think
I would be here today.

Helena:
For so many years

after the police dropped
my case essentially,

every once in awhile,
I would see something

or experience something
that triggered the memory.

And I wondered, "Is it possible
that my kit is still out there?"

I had to keep going
higher and higher and higher

in the level of people I was
getting to advocate for me,

to a point where I had,
you know, an ex-D.A.

calling the Sheriff's Department

to ask, "What happened
with Helena's case?

You need to tell us more."

And within two weeks,
I had a call.

I had a call...

from the Sheriff's Department,

who hadn't called me back
for 14 years.

And they came to my house
with what they call the six-pack.

And even though it had been
more than a decade,

I knew right away
which one he was.

And it was eventually
revealed to me

that the kit had
actually been processed

three or four years prior to my
advocates becoming involved,

that it had matched to
Charles Courtney in that time,

and that no one
had followed up on it.

I feel like a fool
when someone says,

"Well, why didn't they process?
Why didn't they call you?

They had a match.
What happened?"

I don't know,
and I can't tell you,

because they wouldn't tell me,

other than
it fell through the cracks.

Because the DNA from my kit had
not been processed, he went home.

He was... He was
a long-distance truck driver,

which is
another very troubling fact.

The fact that
he had access to victims

between at least
Los Angeles and Ohio.

There could be who knows
how many other victims.

You getting out your piano?

It's playing a song.

Amberly:
It happened April 21st, 1998.

I dropped off some film at the
grocery store to get developed,

and I wanted to stop by there
after I got off work

on my way home that night
to pick it up.

He was out in the parking lot,
lingering around.

Really didn't pay
much attention.

And I went in and got my film,
wasn't in there that long.

Came back out, and he was
still out in the parking lot.

Still didn't register in my head

anything bad
was going to happen.

And, um, I went
to go get in my car,

and he came up behind me
and threatened me.

Said he had a weapon.

And there was a parking lot
that had a bunch of trailers,

truck trailers sitting in them.

There was one pulled out.

So he had me pull my car
in that spot,

and that way, nobody could
see my car from the road.

He had me for a couple of hours.

After he was done
doing what he was doing,

he threatened me,
took my license.

He said he would come back
and kill me and my family

if I reported to the police.

They did a rape kit on me.

And then
after they did all that,

then I went down to the police
station to make a statement.

The police didn't contact me
again for a long time.

Michelle Brettin:
Amberly was assaulted in 1998.

The lab for the state of Ohio
finally received enough money

to hire someone
to put in the DNA

from all the backlog rape kits
across the state.

In 2001,that's
when we finally got the call

that the suspect's DNA

had been in the computer
and it finally hit.

So I started looking at why,
why was he in CODIS?

I read his record. It said
that he had been charged

with a felony sex offense
against his own wife.

He raped his wife
in the same manner

that he raped my victim,
Amberly.

A Fairfield detective
left her card in our door,

and said please contact her.

Brettin:
It was heartbreaking.

She's a beautiful young girl,

and she was struggling
really, really hard.

And... to the point that she
had turned her life to drugs.

When traumatic experiences
like that happen to you,

everybody deals with everything
in a different way,

and it did have something to
do with my addiction issues.

Brettin:
I made contact with her

after I got a lineup together.

When I showed her the lineup, she
couldn't pick Charles Courtney out.

I could have handed her a
hundred lineups with him in it.

It wouldn't have made a
difference. She did not recognize him.

And she told me, she said,

"Hey, you know,
I didn't look at his face."

I concentrated
on one of his tattoos

more than anything else
with him, and, um...

Man:

It was a lion
on his forearm roaring,

and in the background,
there was a sun.

You could see the sun
through the lion's mouth roaring.

Sol took a picture
of every tattoo he had,

everyone of them.

Prison tattoo
after prison tattoo.

And I went back to Amberly,

and then I started showing her
pictures of each and every tattoo,

And I left
the lion's head for last.

Amberly: As soon as
she showed me that tattoo,

I knew that was it.

Brettin: I knew I had
enough to arrest him.

So the next day, went up there,

I called for Hamilton
police officers to back me up.

Two of them came out,
knocked on the front door,

and he answered the door.

He answered the door.

And I asked him,
"You Charles Courtney?"

He said, "Yup." I said,
"You are under arrest."

Woman:

I think it was the next day.

Woman:

She cried. She cried.

She cried, and I think...

some relief.

'Cause I told her, I said,
"He's not gonna do this again.

He's not gonna get out,
he's not gonna hunt you down.

This guy's going away.

There's nothing anybody
can do about it.

He's going away."

I never really thought that
he would ever get caught,

'cause so much time had went by.

Shortly after I had put
Charles Courtney in jail,

Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Department called me

in reference to a case
that they had with Helena

that occurred in 1996.

And they had just received a hit

that Charles Courtney was
also their perpetrator.

I faxed them everything I had

and thought that they were going to go
ahead and proceed with Helena's case.

But there was nothing.

I didn't hear anything back

until about 2011.

From what I understand, Helena
was still pushing for some resolve on it.

A decade, a decade on a case

that could have been
resolved for her.

A decade that
a police department wasted

and not taking care
of its business.

Laura Chick: I have heard
that the prosecution numbers

in Los Angeles
are exceedingly low.

And it's very disturbing to me,
very disturbing.

I cannot imagine why.

Because they don't
prosecute cases... rape cases.

I mean, that's like... that's
like the unspoken problem.

That even the cases that get
taken to them, they get rejected,

a huge majority of cases.

Man:

Oh, I'm not aware of that data.

You're going to have to show
that data to me or share with me,

so I can actually have it
checked out.

I'm not aware of that data.

Dr. Cassia Spohn: When we
looked at the 2005 to 2008 cases,

and we traced them all
the way through the system,

only 12% of the cases
resulted in a... in arrest.

I think it was 8% of the cases

resulted in a conviction,

and about 5% resulted
in a prison sentence.

So in other words, one out of
every 20 reports of forcible rape

reported to the Los Angeles
Police Department

resulted in a prison sentence.

When we asked them, you know, what
do you mean by a "righteous victim"?

They talked about cases
that involve strangers,

who jump out of the bushes and hold a
gun to her head or a knife to her throat.

And these are the exception,

not the rule.

Cases involving acquaintances
and intimate partners

are the typical sexual assaults

that we see reported
to the police.

The roots are the fact that
this was happening to women,

for the most part,

and the misogyny.

The inequality,

the scandalous belief that
women are making up these stories,

all fed into
having a system that was

more than inefficient,

it was... it was scandalous.

That report was
thoroughly discredited.

I'm aware of that report.

It was thoroughly discredited.

It was flawed.

So I'm not even
going to talk about it.

I'll refer you to the people who
did the analysis of that report.

It was thoroughly flawed.

I did a thorough review
of the research methodology,

and the research methodology
that was used

by Spohn and Tellis
is very rigorous.

From the methodological
research point of view,

there was nothing that was
problematic with the study.

When you're going to take
someone's freedom away,

and impact their lives
and their family's lives,

by putting them in prison,

and for sex offenses
in California,

you go to prison for a
longtime, you better be accurate.

You better have a high standard.

And law enforcement sometimes
do bring cases to prosecutors,

and, ultimately, the decision
is the prosecutor's to make.

Cooley might find the study
disreputable for a few reasons.

One is the district attorney
is an elected office,

and the results suggest that not as many
acquaintance cases were taken forward,

and that...
That's not good press.

On average, 86%
of sexual assaults

that are reported to police

are never referred
to the prosecutor's office

even for consideration
of charges.

The decision that nothing is
going to happen with the case

happens right there
in the law enforcement agency.

And when you ask them why
and you look at it,

a lot of times it goes back
to these types of issues.

The victim didn't behave right.

There's something weird
about how she reacted

that makes us
doubt her creditability.

We know that between
12% to 50% of rape victims

experience tonic immobility.

It is called rape-induced
paralysis in this context,

where the key word
there is "paralysis."

The victim cannot move
in the trauma.

It is hardwired into the body
as a protective mechanism.

So this is a case study
from a gang rape.

The victim was frozen,

as they take turns going in
and sexually assaulting her

one after another after another.

Her body did what it needed
to do to try to keep her alive.

So she goes to the hospital,
she has a rape kit,

she gives the initial report
to the police officer,

the police officer refuses
to take the kit.

He said it was a sloppy mess,

and he closed the case
right then and there.

He marked it as "unfounded."

When I interviewed him later,
I asked him why,

and here's what he said.

He said, "She just laid there
so she must have wanted it.

No one wants to have
a train pulled on them,

so if she just laid there
and took it,

she must have wanted it."

Campbell: When we look
at how police are trained,

on the issue of sexual assault,

more often than not
in the academy,

what they learn is,
"This is the law,

these are the different
degrees of the law."

Do they learn
about victim behavior? No.

Do they learn
about trauma? No.

Do they learn about how trauma
impacts memory? No.

And so they bring to the
interaction an expectation

that victims should behave
a certain way.

If you're really traumatized,
you should be crying,

you should be upset,
you should be demonstrative,

you should be grateful
for my help.

So what they see doesn't
look like a real victim,

and if this isn't a real victim
then we're not investigating it,

and we're certainly
not testing the rape kit.

Hargitay: So, Kym, are you
getting good coverage here?

Most of them are on board.

So the press are in,
so we have them with us.

I just think it's so important,

but, you know, also to get
people personally invested to say...

You know, there's something great
when somebody says you can't do it,

and you're like,
"You know what, fuck you."

- Worthy: It could be anywhere.
- "I can do it. I can do it.

Also you don't tell me
what I can and can't do.

- That's right.
- And all it takes is focus,

dedication, and commitment.

Worthy: We have so far, out of
the over 11,000 that were found,

tested 1,600 kits.

And 100 serial rapists
have been identified.

We had to literally,
make a database,

take information
off of every single kit...

Name, where it happened, date.

In many cases, we were
taking the huge journals

and flipping through those and
trying to find anything we could

to match up those kits.

If you can track a package when
you order something from Amazon,

you can track
that package online

and know where it is
at every moment

to know why your items
haven't arrived, where they are,

then certainly we ought
to be able to track

with today's technology,

a victim's rape kit through
the criminal justice system.

I've said long since 2009

that all of these kits
should be tested,

but it doesn't make
any sense to test them all

and then not follow through with
investigating and prosecuting them.

And the CEO, Mr. Ficano, in
his recent deficit elimination plan,

said that the Wayne County
Prosecutor's Office is a low priority,

and we should cease
prosecuting cases

that come from this rape kit
backlog and sexual assault.

So violence against women

is a low priority
in this county to him.

Look, I was sheriff
for two decades,

so I'm very sensitive
to criminal justice

and the needs that are there.

But when the money isn't there,

you got to make some tough
decisions sometimes that are part of that.

Worthy: Sexual assault
is probably the hardest,

probably only second
to child abuse

and child molestation,
to prosecute.

Jurors don't want to believe it.

They find reasons
and excuses to not convict.

And there's a lot of
victim-blaming in sexual assault.

It's the victims fault.
"Why were you there?

Why were you wearing that?"

And no one would ask
a robbery victim,

"Why were you wearing
that necklace?"

That has nothing whatever to do

with the fact that she was
a victim of a violent crime.

What were you wearing that
particular morning, Miss Hughes?

Woman:
Some jeans and a shirt.

- What type of shirt?
- A work shirt.

Okay, like a t-shirt?

Like a pullover.

Okay, I guess I'm not sure
what a pullover is.

And when the driver gets out of
the truck, what do you see him do?

Woman:
Walking towards me.

And what do you do
at that point?

I stood there.

Okay.
You didn't step back?

You didn't run?
You didn't call 911?

. Okay-

Female Attorney:
Did you fight him?

No.

Okay, did you try to kick
at him or kick him off?

Not really, 'cause I didn't
want him to shoot me.

Male Attorney: The verbal conversation
is talking about money, correct?

No.

It's not talking
about money for sex?

. Okay-

What is the verbal conversation?

A gun pointed at me,
telling me to get in

or I'm going to shoot you.

Okay, that's
the only thing that was said?

- That's what he was saying.
- Okay.

Thank you.

Worthy:
You are certainly a sum

of everything
that's happened to you.

It's a part of my past,

but it's something that I
don't think about very often.

And that's very unlike a lot
of sexual assault victims.

This happened back in 1980.

I was in law school
at the time, my first year.

I thought that
I would never be a lawyer,

and that had been my goal
since I was in sixth grade.

And I thought that I would
either drop out

or be so traumatized
if I really faced it head on.

And so I made a decision
very early on

that I wasn't
going to report it.

I did go to the doctor, but
I wasn't going to report it.

Literally I believed that I would
not survive if I went that other path.

And it still was after that
for many, many, many months

about just feeling, like,
just dead inside.

I have adopted daughters,
and you want them to grow up

in a world where there
may not be sexual assault.

Or if, God forbid,
they are sexually assaulted,

their case will be important.

Their kit will
not be sitting on a shelf.

You just want things to be
better for them.

Tim McGinty:
How we doing, guys?

DiSanto:
Good, how are you?

Nicole, she has
a serial case to run by you.

He is currently on parole
in North Carolina.

We have three cases
on him from...

one from '95, one from '97,
and one from 1998.

Now, this victim, Danielle,
she feels a lot of guilt

that had she not gotten herself into
that situation this wouldn't happen.

She blamed herself
rather than the rapist.

- Absolutely.
- Okay.

She was raped, she went,
got a rape kit, she reported.

It's not her fault.

You've got to track him down.

With this
interstate cooperation,

you guys working
cold cases, us...

I think we're going to be
going back and fourth

with a lot of our perpetrators.

I mean, anytime you can get
this kind of person off the street

that's truly a predator,

and its obvious his past shows
he's a predator, is a good day.

We're hoping that he shows up
for this probation meeting,

and we can get him into custody,

and, hopefully,
he'll talk to us.

- It's Bass.
- Man over phone: Hey, man.

Bass: Hey.

Man over phone: The vehicle
was sitting at the house.

His vehicle was at the house, so

When you talked to the
probation agent this morning,

did she say he was going to
come at some point this morning?

Is that what I heard you say?

She said he was going
to be here at 10:00.

- At 10:00.
- And that was 45 minutes ago.

I mean, we got to get him
one way or the other.

We feel... We feel comfortable
going and getting him.

Ohio Investigator:
Can you walk us in there?

Do you want to go in there?

DiSanto:
He's getting dressed?

DiSanto:
You can just wait here a minute.

DiSanto: I guess you're probably
wondering why you're here?

Man: Yeah.

Well, in 1995,

did you happen to have
sex with this woman?

Probably so, ain't no tellin'.

- You what?
- Probably did.

But you don't...
You don't remember her?

I don't know.

I was doing PCP and everything.

If it was at a party,
I might have went.

- I don't know.
- Okay.

She was taken to a building,

held for along period of time,

and raped repeatedly.

Not by me!

- No?
- Hell, no.

She called, they were going
to hang out, kick it,

and then she ends up
getting raped.

- Does that sound familiar?
- Mm-mmm.

Does it make it ring a bell?

You didn't have sex with her?
Why...

Why do you think I'm here
with three different victims,

who have all been raped...

and we're talking to you?

I don't know.

No?

Have you ever raped any women?

- No. Mm-mmm!
- No?

Did you ever get a girl so intoxicated
and then take advantage of her?

- No.
- No?

Because you know that's
against the law as well.

If somebody can't give
informed consent,

that's against the law as well.

Yeah, but
we both intoxicated, too.

I don't know, you raped me,
I don't know.

So do you want to explain how
your DNA is in the 15-year-old?

I don't know.

Or on the 15-year-old
or in her panties?

I don't know.

She probably was partying
and got into an orgy

and probably did some shit she
didn't want to do and regretted it.

People do a lot of strange
shit. You don't know why.

DiSanto:
But if they don't know you,

if you're not tight
with any of these people,

they have no revenge, right?

You haven't done anything
to any of these women, right?

See, that's what I'm saying,
I don't know.

They didn't come to me.

I got DNA, and I went to them.

So why are they still going
to say, "Yep, I was raped?"

What do they have to gain?

Take it to court.
I ain't raped no girls.

Take it to court.
I'm gonna go to court.

DiSanto: Looks like you're
getting a trip back to Cleveland.

Helena: Not knowing what would
happen next in the judicial system

was a huge lead blanket
over my life.

I began researching and found
articles talking about

how Charles Courtney,
he was a convicted rapist.

The other rapes
he was connected to

had kits that were part
of the backlog in Ohio.

God, I don't even remember
when I found out about Helena.

Just by his character,
I could tell

that I wasn't the only one
he'd done things to.

I knew there
was other people out there,

and there probably
still is more out there.

You know, he was a truck driver,

from Ohio, Indiana,
to California.

Helena's from California,

so in all honesty, I believe
there's more women out there,

along the way
that he's probably...

'Cause he's a serial rapist.

Brettin: In Amberly's
case, Charles took a plea.

And he got sentenced
to 30 years.

Man:

No. My family did.

Judge: The State of Ohio
vs. Charles Courtney Jr.

Female Attorney:

Helena: For my own case,
because it had been so long,

the statute of limitations
had expired,

and they were not able
to charge him with rape.

But the D.A. found
a loophole, which was to say

that because he had taken
$20 from my wallet,

it was now abduction with
intent to commit another crime,

which was to take my $20.

That was the only reason that
we were able to file a charge at all,

and because of that,
they were able to get him

to plea to 25 years to life.

But if he hadn't done that,

if we hadn't found that
loophole, that exception,

there wouldn't have been
any justice for me.

Something that I've found
every since then

is that I'm not angry
at Charles Courtney.

I have long moved past
that feeling,

and I feel like terrible things
happen to people.

Violence is learned,
and I have compassion for him.

I don't have compassion for
the system that made this okay.

Because the system should
be more accountable,

the system should be...

The system should be
better than a criminal.

Amberly: if they would
have took it more serious

and believed Helena
and did their jobs

and ran her rape kit
in a timely manner,

I would have never got raped,

'cause he would have
already been caught.

I just have this feeling,
to this day

that there are rape kits
that haven't been processed

that his DNA is on
across this nation.

And I wouldn't be surprised if
they found a body attached to him.

I wouldn't be surprised if
he killed one of those victims.

It's me, it's Ericka.

My sister challenged me
to the gospel challenge.

I can't sing, either.

We two non-singing sisters,

but I'm going to sing anyway,
okay?

Don't judge me when my CD
starts skipping, either.

With me

Wt is well IX

With me, it is

Ericka: An organization
that I was working with,

we were putting on a conference,

and Kym Worthy was
one of our speakers,

because it was national news
about the abandoned warehouses

that the rape kits were in.

When she started talking about
the findings and the numbers,

before that day, I don't think I
connected it mentally or emotionally.

And I said to her, I was like,

"I just wanted you to know that
those numbers, I'm one of them.

You know what I mean?
Like, it's not just numbers.

Like, here I am in front of you.

Like, you're talking about me."

And her face,
she was, like, blown away.

Like, "Oh, my God."

She hugged me
and she held my hand,

and she said,
"You know what, call me."

She said, "I'm going
to follow up with you."

She didn't lie.

I didn't reach out to her,
she reached out to me.

She told me,
"We have found your kit,

and if you want to move
forward, we can move forward."

And my biggest thing was
the shame.

People will know,
people will know.

I had to learn in this process

the shame that's
associated with this,

'cause it is a shameful thing.

It's not mine, it's his.

And I got the courage to go
ahead and take the next step.

Ericka:
Okay, so here we go.

I've been carrying
something for 12 years.

On Facebook, everybody sees
how, you know, I advocate

for different things,
and y'all know I'm a part

of a larger community
of workers.

So, um, on my 21 st birthday,

I was sexually assaulted
by someone,

and I had a rape kit done,

and, um...

it's been sitting on the shelf.

So all of those 11,000 untested
rape kits that they found,

I had one of them.

But that's been my biggest
secret for 12 years.

It's been 12 years
my birthday this year.

I just had to get it out,

and stop trying
to hide and sneak,

and people ask me questions,

and I'm, like, not being
all the way honest.

You know what I mean?

Deshawn:
Well, I'm sorry for whatever

you had to experience
as far as that.

I hope they catch
the son of a bitch

and put him far,
far back in the jail.

I'm proud of you.

I'm glad you're releasing

whatever's holding
you down, definitely.

Yeah, I already feel better now.

I'm ready.

Ericka:
When I reflect back,

one of my favorite words
that I learned is "unapologetic."

So I have learned to be
unapologetic

about who I am
and what I believe.

So, Alise, you know
why I'm taking Spanish?

For the neighbors.

So I can talk
to the neighbors better.

Mm-hmm.

So I started
a block club on our street.

- Oh.
- Whoo-hoo.

I'm getting ready
to run for city council.

I'm evidence that regardless
of what happens to you,

you can get through it.

You can move past it,
you can grow,

you can change for the better.

I am evidence that
there's more to that box.

It's a human being there.

This is not just a kit,
this is a person.

Be careful, it's ice.

Ericka: And the
God that I believe in...

we don't have
to get a victory at court.

Bye, Imani. Bye!

Ericka: You still get
what's coming to you.

I'll be free.

HE'!-

I brought you some good news.

- Guess who's in jail?
- Out here, too?

Nope, down in
North Carolina still.

DiSanto:
So how are you?

Danielle:
I'm okay.

I had some difficulties
when this first came up

with new feelings about it.

'Cause I hadn't thought
about it since it...

You know, I pretty much
buried it since it had happened.

As soon as I saw his face
on that sheet, like,

I just knew right away
who he was.

Like, I'll never... Like, I didn't
think about that face, but now...

Yeah, like, I never forgot.

DiSanto: We just
don't know if he'll plea,

we don't know
if it'll go to trial.

With all three of our cases,

he's indicted on three counts
of Felony One Rape,

three counts
of Felony One Kidnapping,

and one count
of Corruption of a Minor

for our one victim
that was younger than you.

If he got max,

he's looking
at a minimum of 33 years.

- Oh, wow.
- If he got max.

- Wow, that's...
- And those are set sentences.

- That's great.
- I know.

Thank you so much.

Nice job being so strong.

Thank you, you helped me.

McGinty: Linda, you want
to tell us about the stats?

Linda: Sure.

We have in progress

We've completed 790 cases.

McGinty: These rape
kits are the best bargain

in the history
of law enforcement.

$400 a rape kit,

and one in four
results in an indictment.

One in four of the four
is a serial rapist.

I've never seen an opportunity
like this in law enforcement.

It'll never happen again.

Man: My goal is to get
grand jury time every week.

Dissell: You can't change or fix
what happened to one person.

You know, you can be
empathetic about it,

you can listen,
you can tell their story,

but you can't change that.

What you can change is what
might happen to someone else.

Hey, how are you?

Woman:
I'm good, I'm good.

Thank you very much.
You take care.

- Thank you.
- Thank you.

Bye-We-

It's so funny, I remember having
a conversation with Mariska,

and we talked about how
we had 100 serial rapists,

and we were like,
"Wow, how can that...

100 people out still raping

because the kits that pointed
to them weren't tested."

And that meant, you know,
many more than that,

because we knew that...

'Cause these were
the identified serial rapists.

And now we have 770?

I think it's, like, 774.

Over 770
identified serial rapists.

That's almost a thousand!

Over 770 identified serial
rapists just out of this project,

just in one city,
in one county, in one state.

Hargitay: I've been
getting these reports

about what you've been doing,

and it's a constant education
for all of us now.

Kimberly Hurst:
There's been a lot of talk

about the progress that's
been made, and it's been...

I mean, I don't know that I
really sat back and appreciated it.

We have no training
in med school,

P.A. school, nursing school
on how to do these kits.

And now we go into the
hospitals, train physicians,

the P.A. schools,
the nursing schools,

looking to try
and standardize programs.

So we've been working
with partners

at the state level to try
and get that in place

to make sure that there
are programs everywhere.

What we saw in Detroit was
that when you pull them

off the shelf and you test them,

and this has
happened in Cleveland,

it's happened in Los Angeles,

it's happened in New York.

When you test them and
you start seeing the matches,

the hits, kit to kit to kit.

So the proof's in the pudding.

How do we rebuild survivors'
trust in the criminal justice system?

There needs to be an apology,

and we need to be creating
different solutions, different options.

We need to be bringing survivors
in to say, "Give us another chance."

The benefit to public safety
of testing these kits

is almost impossible
to put into words.

The day that it sank in for me

is when Detroit Police
Department sent me...

I don't know,
it might have been you, Marvin.

When you sent me
that list of victims' names.

Because a kit is a kit,
you know.

But when you get
that list of names,

and it just scrolls down,
and it doesn't stop,

and it just keeps going
and going and going.

You're, like,
saying to yourself,

"All right, this is something
where we can't rest, right?

This is something
where we have to go till...

you know,
we have this leader right here

just pursuing the justice.

Worthy: I know y'all talk
about me behind my back.

In a... in a good way.

Worthy: We've been at
this since August of 2009.

Our results from our testing

have links to crime scenes
from 39 other states.

So that means there's only
ten states in the United States

that haven't been affected by our
rape kits that were found in one city.

If anything positive
has happened from all of this,

it's that people
are talking about it,

and people know about it,
and others have come forward.

Ericka:
Just got a phone call

from the investigators and...

So we know my kit
has been tested.

We know that I picked
a person out of a lineup.

We know that that person
has been questioned...

and their DNA was taken

at the time
that they were questioned.

The test results are in,
and the profiles match.

And I feel very free,

and I feel... I feel new.

And I want
to encourage other women

who may be watching this video
that have experienced a rape,

a molestation,
any act of violence,

to press forward,
because I feel strong.

I feel stronger than
I've ever known I can feel,

and in ways that I've
never known that I could.

All right, I'm done, I'm done.

I gotta get it together.

Oh, man, but I love you all
and thank you.

God bless.

They need to let us decide if
we're going to send the kit in

and when we send the kits in,

Because the majority
of our... our rapes...

Not to say we don't
have rapes, we do.

But the majority of our rapes
that are called in

are actually consensual sex.

Now what?

I don't know,
want to go do something fun?

You want to have some fun?

You know how to drive?

No.

High-five.

Thank you!

The DNA identified
by testing my kit

brought a serial interstate
rapist to justice.

If it had been done earlier,

at least one other rape could
have been prevented, perhaps more.