Rape kit tests try to bring justice, stop new crimes

The woman was sitting in her car outside her business about 1:15 a.m. when 15-year-old Joshua Brooks approached. He had on a ski mask and pointed a gun at her. He took her last $3, raped her and left.

That was on Jan. 19, 2004.

The victim did everything she should have: She called the police and allowed a sexual assault kit to be taken. That rape kit never saw the light of day until 2009, when it was found in a Detroit police storage facility along with about 11,000 others.

By then, Joshua Brooks had been arrested for home invasion and assault with intent to commit great bodily harm and on a felony firearm charge in Oakland County in 2005. After spending two years as a ward of the state, he was arrested again and charged with assault with intent to commit armed robbery in Detroit in 2012.

After his victim's kit was tested, Brooks, who was already serving 41/ 2 to 20 years in prison, was identified as the 2004 rapist. He pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and got two concurrent 12- to 30-year sentences.

The Brooks case is one of 18 that Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy has closed using results of the rape kits, the basis for a $10-million, public-private fund-raising campaign to ensure the kits get tested and investigators use the results to find rapists who have been unaffected by them for at least 30 years.

She's 18 for 18. Eighteen cases. Eighteen convictions.

She's not resting on her laurels, however, when thousands of victims remain as this massive effort begins moving from testing to prosecution.

"I am pleased that we have been able to bring justice to victims in the cases we have adjudicated," she said. "Our main focus is to continue to prosecute and convict dangerous felons and to hopefully bring renewed faith in the criminal justice system to sexual assault survivors."

That's quite a record for an effort that, a year ago, had little funding for the kits and a single investigator to dog the cases.

The effort was stepped up in a big way a year ago after a casual chat among leaders on the front porch of Mackinac Island's Grand Hotel. Hudson-Webber Foundation President Dave Egner was talking with a few other leaders about Worthy's need for funding to test the rape kits and suggested a public-private partnership that would allow the Michigan Women's Foundation to accept donations, then grant money to the Detroit Crime Commission to pay Worthy's bills.

The effort just got two big boosts:

■ Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette pledged $3 million in state funds for the new Wayne County Sexual Assault Kit Task Force to investigate and prosecute leads resulting from the kits' DNA testing.

■ Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, battling a fiscal crisis left by his predecessor, has agreed to provide free offices for the task force in the Guardian Building, Worthy revealed this week. The office, its computers and other amenities won't come out of Worthy's budget, which she has persistently and consistently said doesn't allow her to do her job. The justice-on-a-shoestring approach is yet one more example of local officials finding new ways to operate in a recovering, but struggling local economy.

But there is something about a community coming together to correct a long-overdue wrong. There also is something about having a headquarters that makes this effort real — as real as 18 convictions in 18 cases that have gone to trial. That's a 100% success rate on cases so far, from rape kits that have sat, in some cases, for decades. The more investigators Worthy can get, the faster they can find suspects and the greater the likelihood that they might get more monsters before they commit other crimes or before the statue of limitations runs out on all those rapes, and that justice is lost forever.

Worthy soon will move forward with seven full-time investigators, including five loaned from the City of Detroit, three prosecutors, two criminal intelligence analysts (one in Detroit and one in Lansing), a victim advocate, a paralegal/statistician and a clerical assistant.

Around 10,000 sexual assault kits have been tested to date by two private labs. After the testing is completed, they are finally reviewed by the Michigan State Police crime lab for accuracy, said Worthy's spokeswoman, Maria Miller.

Still, Worthy — and the partnership — continue to raise money. Even with the ramped-up funding and additional help, she needs more investigators. The rape kit problem is, sadly, a national one shared by several cities. And Detroit is still struggling to match what other cities do.

"There are over 400,000 of these kits across the United States, enough to fill up the Big House four times," said Worthy, citing the University of Michigan mega-stadium. "There was no book, no blueprint, no manual that told us what to do."

So every city is doing it differently. For instance, Cleveland has 4,000 rape kits to process, but 35 investigators, all in the prosecutors' office, to do the work, Worthy said.

Worthy may not be able to get justice for each of the 11,000 victims whose justice was lost. But she said, "We can make sure our victims know that we're doing whatever it takes. We're going to bring justice to the ones that we can. The biggest thing is we want to restore their trust in the justice system."

Contact Rochelle Riley: 313-223-4473 or on Twitter @rochelleriley. Listen to her on "In the Mix with Marie Osborne and Rochelle Riley" at 4 p.m. Sundays on 760AM WJR.

How to help

The Enough Said campaign began in January to raise $10 million. The campaign had raised $497,766 from 580 donors by Friday, most of them individuals, said Peg Tallet, the campaign's executive director. Donations have poured in from people across the country, ranging from a $25,000 gift from Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandburg to hundreds of dollars from a group of West Bloomfield friends' canasta winnings, to checks from local corporations. The most recent was $100,000 from Moko, the global social media company. Additionally, the Crime Commission itself had raised $359,000 by Friday.

To donate to the efforts to gain justice for rape victims whose kits were found, go to www.enoughsaiddetroit.org.