Victim advocate groups praise Wisconsin Department of Justice on rape kit testing, Democrats say it

Victim advocate groups praise Wisconsin Department of Justice on rape kit testing, Democrats say it didn't come soon enough


Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel announced Monday the state Department of Justice has finished testing a backlog of 4,154 sexual assault kits, the culmination of a multi-year effort led by the state and several nonpartisan, nonprofit groups.

“When I took office in 2015, I worked with our team to identify and collect more than 6,000 sexual assault evidence kits that had never been submitted to the crime labs for testing, some of them dating back to the 1980s,” Schimel said Monday.

The announcement comes two months before Schimel is up for reelection. Democrat Josh Kaul is hoping to unseat Schimel in November.

Testing the kits with a victim-centric approach was the aim of the Wisconsin Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, started in 2012, under former Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen. The initiative worked to address the accumulation of previously unsubmitted sexual assault kits held by local law enforcement agencies and hospitals across Wisconsin.

Read more: https://madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/victim-advocate-groups-praise-wisconsin-department-of-justice-on-rape/article_b231454e-448e-58bf-8868-dcaacebdd0bf.html