Texans have donated more than $8 million to test rape kits, but where is the money?

DALLAS - People applying for or renewing their Texas driver's license understand the routine of filling out the application's typical fields - name, date of birth, sex, height, weight, race and ethnicity, address.

Then come the check boxes. Between the boxes about organ donor status and medical history, Texans might notice a couple questions asking if they would like to donate as little as $1 to various causes, including veterans assistance, blindness screening and rape kit testing.

Ginger Gatling wrote in wanting to know more: "When you renew your Texas driver's license, you are given an opportunity to donate money to help clear the rape kit backlog. I haven't been able to find out if this task is actually being done or what the result is."

Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. experience sexual violence each year, yet few perpetrators serve time in jail or prison, advocates say. Rape kits can help by preserving physical evidence of an assault. DNA evidence can strengthen cases against perpetrators, said Ilse Knecht, director of policy and advocacy at the Joyful Heart Foundation. The foundation runs the national End the Backlog campaign.

DNA evidence is recorded in national databases, which have proven instrumental in solving years-old assaults by repeat offenders who committed a new crime, Knecht said.

Yet the longer a rape kits goes untested, the higher possibility evidence samples can degrade if not stored properly. Also, statutes of limitations can expire, though in Texas there is no time limit for prosecuting most criminal categories of sexual assault. The civil statute is more narrow.

"While that kit was sitting on a shelf, if it had been tested earlier, this other woman would still be alive," she said. "These are usually serial criminals. The longer it takes, the more time they have to victimize and cause harm."

A 2009 study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 51% of suspected rape perpetrators referred to prosecutors had at least one prior conviction of any kind, and 37% had at least one prior felony conviction.

Additionally, survivors bear a heavy emotional toll from assaults and subsequent legal proceedings, which can be made worse by delays in processing evidence.

"All the time elapsing and waiting can make survivors think, 'They don't believe me,' or that what happened to them doesn't matter to anyone," Knecht said.

What is a backlogged rape kit?

To understand the backlog, it's important to know the steps a rape kit goes through before analysis is completed. Texas code on sexual assault prevention and crisis services outlines four broad steps:

1. The initial collection of evidence during a forensic medical examination

2. Receipt and storage at a law enforcement agency

3. Receipt and analysis at an accredited crime laboratory

4. Storage and destruction after analysis

House Bill 8, passed in 2019 during Texas' 86th legislative session, mandated two key deadlines for the rape kit analysis process: A law enforcement agency must submit the kit to a lab within 30 days of receiving it, and the lab has 90 days to complete analysis.

The state considers a rape kit backlogged if either of those deadlines were missed. However, some law enforcement agencies consider kits backlogged if they were collected before the deadlines took effect.

Advocates have praised the mandated time limits between steps as an important measure in rape kit reform, but they came with inadvertent consequences. Some law enforcement agencies and crime labs with heavy caseloads have had to deprioritize testing older rape kits that aren't beholden to the deadlines, according to police departments' grant applications obtained by The Dallas Morning News. In its 2021 application, the City of Dallas stated there were more than 2,000 such kits sitting untested without any deadline, some dating back 10 years.

How much money has been donated?

Former state Rep. Victoria Neave, D-Dallas, told KERA in 2017 that backlogged rape kits numbered well into the tens of thousands across the state. At the time, she was sponsoring House Bill 1729, which would establish the program to accept donations from anyone applying for an original or renewal of a Texas driver's license, ID or commercial driver's license. She told KERA she expected the bill to generate $1 million a year to address the issue.

The 85th Texas Legislature passed the bill, and in 2018 the donation option was added to the driver's license form.

The donations go into a pool for the Sexual Assault Evidence Testing Grant Program administered by the governor's office. From there, law enforcement agencies can apply for funding from the grant program. Law enforcement agencies can use the funds for equipment and labor costs associated with processing and testing rape kits and for entering relevant information into the federal DNA database CODIS.

The program's funding source - everyday Texans - sets it apart from federal grant programs, which have been frozen or cut in recent years.

According to Texas Department of Public Safety records obtained by The News, more than $8.2 million has been donated to rape kit testing through the driver's license application

Who has received donations?

Grant application records show more than $5.8 million of the donation pool had been distributed as of April. D-FW area law enforcement agencies have received a total of $1,406,600 from the fund:

* 2019: Dallas County received $234,000.

* 2020: The City of Fort Worth received $200,000.

* 2021: The City of Dallas received $274,100. Fort Worth received $200,000.

* 2023: Dallas received $248,500.

* 2025: Fort Worth received $250,000.

The cities of Dallas and Fort Worth applied for additional funds for the 2026-27 grant cycle - $1,250,670 and $400,000, respectively. Applications for this grant cycle are under review.

There seems to be no standard amount for how expensive it is to test a single rape kit, based on The News' review of seven grant applications from the Dallas and Fort Worth police departments. Each application, even for the same agency, listed a different cost-per-kit estimate based on its resources - lab equipment, personnel, the need to outsource testing to a third-party crime lab - at the time of the application. Throughout the applications, estimates ranged from about $1,500 to $2,350 per kit.

The number of evidence pieces in a kit can also affect the cost of processing and testing. The contents of a rape kit can include swabs of different parts of the body, hairs, fingernail clippings, clothing, bedding and photos of injuries.

The evidence that goes into a survivor's kit depends on the areas of the body affected by the assault and what the survivor consents to during the forensic exam, said Jennifer Degner, a registered sexual assault nurse examiner who practiced in San Antonio for more than a decade.

"The kit can look very simple and clinical, but when I look at it, I see hours of listening and supporting and caring to get those pieces of evidence," she said.

The exams can be invasive, and survivors may not agree to have all the recommended evidence collected.

"And that's entirely their right," Degner said. "Everything in an exam is voluntary... Our job is to put the control back into the hands of the patient."

What are the results from the donations?

According to final progress reports obtained by The News, at least 4,150 pieces of evidence across the state have been processed since 2019 with funding from the public's donations on the driver's license application. That's a conservative estimate due to differences in reporting across grant recipients.

The most recent grant applications for Dallas and Fort Worth, certified in February, indicate both police departments have recently eliminated their rape kit backlogs and have been operating within the mandated deadlines.

Despite those feats, the agencies cited ongoing challenges: Fort Worth Police Department's in-house crime lab has had staffing turnover and shortages since 2020, and the Dallas Police Department relies on a third-party regional crime lab that can get overwhelmed.

Additionally, Dallas' application states there may be an influx of evidence to process after the 89th Texas Legislature passed House Bill 1422 last year. The law allows sexual assault survivors to request DNA testing without having to file a police report.

At the state level, DPS releases annual reports on the state's rape kit tracking system Track-Kit. As of November, 278 kits were recorded as having missed the 30-day deadline to be handed off to the lab, and 52 were recorded as having missed the 90-day deadline for the lab to complete its analysis.

Representatives from the Texas Department of Public Safety, Dallas Police Department, Fort Worth Police Department and Dallas County District Attorney's Office either did not respond to requests for interviews or declined.

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