Could Maine finally create a statewide system for tracking rape kits?

Maine lawmakers are considering whether to pay for a statewide system to track sexual assault kits, such as those above, after a previous effort came close but failed last year. Rick Bowmer/Associated Press

Maine lawmakers are considering whether to pay for a statewide system to track sexual assault kits after a previous effort came close but failed last year.

Proponents fear hundreds of kits throughout Maine are being overlooked and that a majority have never been tested and will never lead to arrests or convictions. But it will cost millions of dollars to identify and test all of them — and the proposal has returned to lawmakers during an even more competitive year for the state budget.

Ever since a bill to pay for a statewide system died at adjournment in the last session, momentum has only grown. Both Kennebec and Penobscot counties have launched their own tracking systems using federal funds. Cumberland County received a $2.5 million grant in December to send an estimated 500 untested kits to an out-of-state lab.

But the grant that helped Kennebec and Penobscot counties is about to dry up. If the state doesn’t step in now, that work “might not move forward to anything,” said Melissa Martin, policy director for the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

“This is really the point where I think the state needs to step in,” Martin said at a hearing for the bill Monday.

The Legislature’s Judiciary Committee is considering two bills this year, both of which call on the Maine Department of Public Safety to create a statewide tracking system for all of the state’s sexual assault kits that would allow victims to receive updates on the status of their kits.

Both bills would also require the department to compile an inventory of all its backlogged and shelved cases, and to share a report on its progress with lawmakers by January 2027.

“We have no idea — we truly just don’t know — how many kits are in storage,” said Keri Kapoldo, who coordinates the Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner program for St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor.

“We just can’t fix something we can’t see,” Kapoldo said.

In March, the committee voted “ought to pass” on LD 549, a proposal introduced by Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford. The bill would cost about $1.1 million over the next two years, about one-third of which would be covered by the state Highway Fund.

Bennett said in February that Maine is drastically behind other states when it comes to tracking and testing its rape kits. A majority of kits collected from hospitals never get tested, he said.

“But victims don’t know this,” Bennett said. “They expect that after they go through the traumatic experience of reliving an event, it will help lead to justice. … It should be a dark mark of shame that this is so far from the truth.”

LD 1816, which had its public hearing Monday, is slightly different because it wouldn’t mandate that kits be sent to law enforcement agencies, according to its sponsor, Sen. Jill Duson, D-Portland. Whether kits are tested would be up to the person who has been sexually assaulted. Not everyone wants to move forward with an investigation or seek prosecution.

“We want to leave room for the victim, whose trauma created the kit,” said Duson during the hearing.

Both proposals are bipartisan; Bennett is also a co-sponsor on Duson’s bill. He said Monday afternoon that his biggest priority is establishing a statewide tracking system.

“These other questions are moot if we don’t get the tracking and inventory part going,” he said in a phone interview.

Advocates for sexual assault victims said Monday said that they support this too, although some said during Monday’s hearing they preferred legislation that would allow victims the choice to opt out from sharing their kits’ results.

Kapoldo said that in 2024, roughly two-thirds of the 70 people who completed exams agreed to share their results with law enforcement.

About half of those people were ready to share evidence at the time of their exams. Others wanted to wait.

“These numbers tell a powerful story,” Kapoldo said. “Survivors are seeking the care but they’re not always ready to engage in the judicial system or the criminal justice system.”

A similar bill last year, LD 2129, would have cost roughly $350,000 in its first year, a little less than a third of which would have come from the state’s Highway Fund.

Maine State Police Crime Lab Director Mike Zabarsky said in February that he was concerned by provisions in LD 549 that would require his staff to test all completed kits starting in 2027. (The same provisions are included in LD 1816.) He questioned whether the lab would have the capacity to take on this extra work, given its limited resources.

“Without more data from the pilot project, I cannot tell you whether the lab will be swamped with untested kits,” Zabarsky testified. “What I can tell you is that the lab has a backlog of kits today and any additional kits submitted to us will have a chilling effect on our ability to prioritize violent crimes against people and process kits in a timely manner without detrimentally impacting our goal to maximize throughput and achieve reasonable turnaround times.”

Supporters on Monday said the proposal under LD 1816 could cost less, because it only seeks to scale existing pilot programs in Kennebec and Penobscot counties to cover the whole state.