Political Quotes

“This amendment I have offered in conjunction with Senator Vitter, Senator McConnell, Senator Michael Bennet from Colorado, and others is a bipartisan amendment which will make sure that more of the money contained in the funds the Congress appropriates to the Department of Justice will be used to test backlogged rape kit evidence that has not been tested. I know the jargon may be a little confusing, but basically what happens is when the law enforcement officials investigate a sexual assault, they take a rape kit to collect physical evidence and bodily fluids for DNA testing, among other types of tests. It is a national scandal that we don't know how many untested rape kits there may be. In other words, criminal investigations take place where this critical evidence is acquired, but it never goes to a laboratory to be tested to identify the perpetrator of that sexual assault. It is estimated that there are as many as 400,000 untested rape kits across the country sitting either in laboratories or in police lockers, evidence lockers, that have not yet been forwarded for testing at a laboratory--400,000. I heard a chilling statistic this morning from a young woman, Camille Cooper, who is the legislative director of an organization called PROTECT out of Knoxville, TN. This is an organization that commits itself to combating child sex crimes and to helping those victims get justice.…”