© The Associated Press/Damian Dovarganes DNA was collected from Helena Lazaro of Glendale, Calif., after she was raped at knifepoint seven years ago, but it sat untested with thousands of other rape kits in a police storeroom instead of being entered into an FBI database. The man was arrested and released during that time.
Today police and prosecutors are extensively trained in how to move cases forward, and sexual-assault investigative and prosecutorial units are common in most major cities.
Yet despite these reforms, the number of reported rapes that lead to an arrest - much less a conviction - remains intractably small. In 2010 the arrest rate for rape was 24 percent, which was exactly what it was in the late 1970s, when the FBI first began tracking such data. Too many rape cases in this country don't just remain unresolved - they remain uninvestigated.
Most reported rapes are perpetrated by someone the victim knows, and law enforcement operate on the misguided assumption that these so-called acquaintance-rape cases are too hard to prove or are false reports by victims motivated to harm the accused. Consequently, these "non-stranger" rape cases often languish after they are reported, and, even when they do move forward, law-enforcement officers see no need to test a rape kit in the case, since they already know who the suspect is.
Comment: Please read the Sott Focus: Hysterization Via Racism in the Trayvon Martin Case for a better understanding of the dynamics at play in the Trayvon Martin case.