Anthony Weiner: “Mr. Speaker, the way we treat the victims of rape in this country is a crime. Evidence that is collected at crime scenes…”

“Mr. Speaker, the way we treat the victims of rape in this country is a crime. Evidence that is collected at crime scenes often sits for years, sometimes beyond the statute of limitations, completely untouched by human hands. When that victim goes into a hospital emergency room, frequently they sit in triage with dozens of other people for hours at a time waiting to be examined by someone with no experience in such cases. With this legislation, we change both of those things. More than 350,000 rape kits, evidence, sits on warehouse shelves throughout the country. We had as many as 16,000 in New York City, until the city began its own program of trying to analyze that evidence. The technology exists, quite frankly, to match victims' DNA collected at crime scenes with those of criminals. We can make hits and we can often put people away; 154 cold cases have resulted in cases being solved, and in 204 more cases, we know who did it. And now it is just a matter of finding that perpetrator of a crime. Can you imagine being a person who has been victimized in that way, having that crime scene created, having the evidence taken in the most invasive of ways, only to learn that it is sitting and sitting and sitting without any effort to analyze it. Why do we have this problem? One word, money.”