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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A 16-year-old girl allegedly raped while she was intoxicated is the first victim to see her case head to court as part of an effort to test thousands of rape kits that for years were collected by Albuquerque police, but never processed.

On Tuesday, an Albuquerque grand jury indicted Dayquan Terna, 21, on criminal sexual penetration of a child between the ages of 13 and 18, sexual exploitation of children and conspiracy charges. Regina Gomez, 20, was also indicted on sexual exploitation of children and other charges in the case.

The indictment is the first of what prosecutors said will eventually be many brought against offenders – including some who prosecutors described as “serial rapists” – who for years have been able to skirt punishment because evidence was never completely processed.

“In the batches of cases, some people’s names are coming up more than once. So we have serial rapists out there,” Deputy District Attorney Lelia Hood of the Special Victims Unit said in an interview. “Even if we can’t prosecute the case, people whose name comes up in more than one case, we’re going to be able to identify them.”

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Former State Auditor Tim Keller, now the mayor of Albuquerque, in December 2016 issued a report finding that throughout New Mexico, there were about 5,400 rape kits that had been collected as evidence, but never processed. The vast majority of the cases, about 4,000, were from Albuquerque.

As mayor, Keller one year ago issued an executive order that set in motion steps to clear the backlog.

Hood said that at the start of the year, Albuquerque police had sent prosecutors more than 1,800 lab reports of rape kits that had been processed. She said prosecutors are working to screen the cases and see if they can be prosecuted.

So far, prosecutors have determined that 538 of those kits are from cases that can’t be prosecuted and 52 are now going through “advanced screening.”

She said cases won’t be prosecuted for a variety of reasons, including that the statute of limitation has run its course, or the victim or suspect have died.

In a statement, Mayor Keller said, “For us, testing the rape kit backlog is driven by both honoring the commitment to survivors and getting perpetrators behind bars. This is the beginning of the kind of results that other cities have seen as well. Each and every … kit is important because it represents a survivor who has been waiting for answers.”

The case that led to this week’s indictment happened in November 2016. According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court more than two years ago, Terna and Gomez were drinking alcohol with the 16-year-old at an apartment on Eubank.

The complaint said that Gomez told them that Terna had sex with the girl while she was very impaired. Terna told police that Gomez was encouraging him and assisted the act when they were all in bed together, according to the complaint. Terna was originally charged with false imprisonment, but the case was dismissed. Terna and Gomez were 18 and 19, respectively, at the time.

“Basically what happened was we were drinking and made poor choices involving underage drinking, which we all were at the time,” Terna said in a Facebook message with the Journal on Wednesday. “I’ve been working hard to keep that behind me. That year was full of poor choices for us. And I’m trying to better myself from that situation and the person I was from all the hurt from my toxic upbringing.”