Differences in resources and evidence collection practices will need to be a major consideration for Missouri's sexual assault task force, its final hearing determined.
In its fourth and final hearing Tuesday, the Missouri Rights of Victims of Sexual Assault Task Force heard from a sexual assault survivor, prosecutors, law enforcement personnel, and medical and social care workers regarding the state's current procedures for sexual assault evidence collection and their recommendation's for improving it.
The Missouri Rights of Victims of Sexual Assault Task Force is a 13-member task force created through legislative action last year. The group is focused on collecting feedback and recommendations from state and local law enforcement, victim services, forensic science and health care practitioners to help develop "future best practices or clinical guidelines regarding the care and treatment of survivors."
Hearing from professionals in Missouri's largest and smallest areas, Tuesday's hearing often veered into discussions of the state's urban-rural divide and how it impacts current law enforcement, medical and legal processes in sexual assault cases.
Mark Webb, Bolivar Police Department chief, said rural law enforcement agencies often don't have the resources, training and experience of their counterparts in more urban areas, which can impact their ability to enforce laws.
"To handle these complex investigations, we're lacking," Webb said. "I'm just going to tell you, I think that's going to be the case in a lot of smaller jurisdictions."
Webb said when he took the police chief position in Bolivar, he was surprised to see the lack of sexual assault cases in the area. Upon closer inspection and more time with the department, he realized officers and college Title IX officers weren't taking reports seriously.
He provided an example of a time a man was reported to have sexually assaulted a woman, but it wasn't reported.
"They told me how they investigated it and they just made a joke about it," Webb said. "I said, 'Well, see right there, that's a sexual assault.' That was kind of the end of the conversation."
While training and appropriate conduct are straightforward solutions, Webb said well-trained and experienced officers tend to leave smaller departments for better pay in more urban locations.
Additionally, Webb said, rural hospitals often lack necessary resources, like Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners on staff to conduct exams and collect potential evidence.
Lana Garcia, forensic coordinator at Cox Health, raised similar concerns.
"Two out of three of those rural sites had a SANE program at the time, but they often reported feeling under supported and had a consistent, revolving group - as one group left, another group came on as they received SANE training," Garcia said. "So a lack of experience was something we had identified pretty early on at some of those rural sites."
Garcia said Cox Health has implemented a teleSANE program to now provide 24/7 SANE care for survivors at all locations, whereas before the care was inconsistent and SANE availability was dependent on location.
In rural locations, Garcia said, more emphasis needs to be put on education surrounding management and storage of sexual assault kits - which law enforcement can take up to 14 days to collect from the hospital - and the space required to store the evidence properly.
Garcia said some hospitals' lack of support for evidence collection (particularly those without an emergency room) and the high cost associated with teleSANE programs should also be among the task force's considerations.
Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson said statewide regulations and guidelines should take into account differences in jurisdictions.
While resources allow Greene County to store non-report kits for 20 years, the state's guidance suggests keeping kits for five years - which is how long they're kept at the Missouri Highway Patrol's repository. Those timelines also differ from hospital-specific practices, like Cox Health's policy of keeping kits for 100 years.
"Keep in mind, even though it's at the state level, that different places will have different resources," Patterson said. "Keeping the kits for five years at the lab for some jurisdictions may be a huge benefit to them, but for us we had the capability to do something different."
Patterson also suggested the state invest more in trauma-informed systems and provide prosecutors and investigators more training in responding to and working with traumatized victims.
Management and storage of evidence was also a concern for Emily Warren, forensic DNA analyst for the Kansas City Crime Lab.
Warren said crime labs are working through massive backlogs of sexual assault kits, which was compounded by Missouri's 2018 law requiring all reported sexual assault kits to be sent to labs for testing.
With half of her lab's analysts employed through grants, Warren said crime lab staffing is a major concern as it directly impacts the number of kits that can be tested.
She also said storage of kits and evidence became burdensome for many labs, and that burden was simply shifted to the Highway Patrol's repository for non-report kits.
That repository, however, doesn't accept urine or blood samples, or pieces of clothing not included in the kit that could still be tested for DNA. Warren said she would like to see SANE nurses trained to add clothing - or clothing samples - to sexual assault kits to be tested by labs or safely stored with the rest of evidence.
The task force also heard from Sarah Cirese-Payton, a clinical social worker with the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project, who talked about how the state's handling of sexual assault cases can negatively impact LGBTQ Missourians.
Cirese-Payton said LGBTQ survivors of sexual assault are likely not to engage in the medical and criminal justice processes because of a lack of safe spaces for reporting and a fear or stigma of not being believed.
"The hard reality is that members of the LGBTQ community are victims of sexual violence because of their sexual orientation and gender identity," Cirese-Payton said. "They may even be targeted by predators or perpetrators who understand that due to their victim's identity and orientation, the crime will likely not be reported."
Misgendering and harassment from law enforcement are also reasons many LGBTQ people don't report sexual assault, Cirese-Payton said.
Tuesday was the last hearing of the task force, which has conducted three previous hearings centered around Missouri's current standards and practices, sexual assault survivor privacy and funding recommendations to support survivors.
In addition to the hearings, the task force is collecting public comments through a form at www.surveymonkey.com/r/MORightsTaskForce through the end of the month.
The task force's work will culminate in a findings report provided to Gov. Mike Parson and the Missouri General Assembly by Dec. 31.