End The Backlog

This app is not designed to prevent a sexual assault or alert authorities. If you are in immediate danger, please call 911 immediately!

Disclaimer: We are not affiliated with http://www.endthebacklog.org. We are an independent company who believes in preventing sexual assault and that eliminating the rape kit backlog is critically important in doing so.

We created this app to provide more information on the backlog and to help you advocate and raise awareness to this important issue. With this app you can:

- Learn about the backlog and what you can do to help.
- Share messages of support through social media by using templates created by EndTheBacklog.org
- Write members of your local government (Governor, House and Senate) by using templates created by EndTheBacklog.org
- Donate to EndTheBacklog.org to help support their advocacy and education programs.
- Share the app and information with your friends and family.

More about the backlog:

"Every two minutes, someone is sexually assaulted in the United States. With the crime of sexual assault, the victim’s body is a part of the crime scene. When the victim reports the assault to the police, a hospital or rape crisis center, a doctor or nurse will photograph, swab and conduct an invasive and exhaustive examination of the victim’s entire body for DNA evidence left behind by the attacker—a process that takes four to six hours to complete. That evidence is collected and preserved in a sexual assault evidence kit, commonly referred to as a rape kit.

When tested, DNA evidence contained inside rape kits can be an incredibly powerful tool to solve and prevent crime. It can identify an unknown assailant and confirm the presence of a known suspect. It can affirm the survivor's account of the attack and discredit the suspect. It can connect the suspect to other crime scenes. It can exonerate innocent suspects.

To accomplish these things, however, rape kits must be tested.

In the past, the federal government estimated that hundreds of thousands of rape kits sit untested in police and crime storage facilities across the country in what is known as the rape kit backlog. Each kit represents a lost opportunity to bring healing and justice to a survivor of sexual violence.

Using one example, in New York City, where there had been a backlog of 17,000 untested rape kits before it was eliminated in 2003, city and law enforcement officials enacted a policy and developed a system to test every rape kit. The city’s arrest rate for rape has since jumped from 40% to 70%." via @endthebacklog

Additionally, it is not uncommon for a rapist to attack more than one victim which makes it imperative to test this information and to get a rapist off the street and prevent further assaults. "After Detroit finally processed its backlog, 100 serial rapists were detected and 14 prosecutions were filled. One of these offenders, whose original victim had filed a rape kit more than ten years ago, went on to rape three other women." via @feministabulous

Please join us in working to #endthebacklog. You can learn more at http://www.endthebacklog.org