What happened when we tested thousands of abandoned rape kits in Detroit | Kym Worthy

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2018

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2009, 11,341 untested rape kits -- some dating back to the 1980s -- were found in an abandoned warehouse once used by the the Detroit police to store evidence. When this scandal was uncovered, prosecutor Kym Worthy set a plan into action to get justice for the thousands of victims affected. In this powerful, eye-opening talk, Worthy explains how her office helped develop an innovative program to track and test these kits -- and calls for a national effort to help solve the problem of stockpiled rape kits.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features prosecutor Kim Worthy, recorded live at TED at UPS 2018.
0:08.1	In 2009 in August, my office weathered two major scandals.
0:15.6	The first was the arrest, trying, and conviction,
0:20.4	and subsequent incarceration of Detroit's very popular mayor.
0:25.3	The second caused the Detroit Police Department crime lab to be closed. I thought nothing else
0:33.9	could go wrong. And then the phone rang.
0:39.3	It was the deputy chief of my special victim's unit
0:43.3	who was breathless on the other end of the line.
0:46.3	He said,
0:47.3	boss, you are never going to believe what I just saw.
0:52.3	I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach
0:55.0	because I knew instinctively
0:58.0	the Detroit was getting ready to suffer
1:00.0	its third major scandal in just over one year.
1:06.0	He told me that he had just visited
1:09.0	what he thought was an abandoned warehouse
1:11.4	where the Detroit Police Department was storing evidence.
1:15.8	Inside were 11,341 abandoned untested rape kits.
1:25.0	Some of them went back to the 1980s, and some of them now are over 40 years old.
1:33.5	These kits were spilling out of large black garbage bags and empty oil drums.
1:40.6	Each kit represented a victim, mostly a female,
1:45.0	that had suffered a violent sexual assault.
	...

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