Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One.

An A&E original podcast.

This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Use your best judgment.

When a woman is raped, she has the option of going to a hospital for a sexual assault forensic exam, commonly referred to as a rape kit.

During the exam, the woman is asked about her medical history and questions about any sexual encounters they've had.

They are asked how they were specifically assaulted to help the practitioner focus the exam.

She has to take off all of her clothes, which are taken from her and placed it in an evidence bag. Her body is examined from head to toe.

This includes being swabbed in various places where the attacker might have left his DNA.

Pictures are taken of her naked body, and then samples are taken of her blood and urine.

When the exam is over, the woman is offered follow-up treatment for possible STIs and possible pregnancy.

Depending on the facility, information about counseling and support groups might be shared with the victim.

The process is uncomfortable to think about, and an additional traumatic experience piled on the trauma of being sexually assaulted.

Women undergo rape kit exams because they want their rapists to be caught, which makes the fact that there are at least 200,000 untested rape kits in the United States, 11,000 in Canada,

175,000 in the UK, and an estimated over 10,000 in Australia, so infuriating.

One of those cases was Robin Hill. She was 14 years old in 1998 when she was raped on her way home from a roller skating party.

Her sexual assault friend to exam joined the thousands of others that went untested.

From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. I'm Brooke, and here's the incomparable Bill Curtis with a special type of episode.

In this Cold Case classic, Bill follows investigators in real time as they try to solve their toughest cold cases.

This is Evidence Kit, Chicago.

The Evidence Locker. This is the crossroads of crime and punishment.

Within these walls, thousands of unsolved crimes take the form of Evidence Kits, and inside each one is the story of a victim waiting for justice.

In 1998, Robin Hill is a high school junior.

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