Crying Silent Tears - our daughter's fight for justice

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1540835/

Imagine for the moment: You are a rape victim. In the aftermath of such a traumatic event, the police will ask to collect DNA evidence from your body, a process that can take four to six hours. Police will take this evidence, known as a rape kit, and you might think it is on its way to be tested for a DNA match that could lead to a prosecution and conviction. However, in the end you find out the police had everything they needed to prosecute a case but chose to ignore the evidence and the taped confessions.

After months of waiting for your rape test kit to be tested, if it ever is tested, your rape kit comes back with your attackers DNA. They found his semen on my daughter’s genitals. When you call to follow up on your case with the new evidence, you’re told your case was already closed.

This is my daughter’s compelling story of her fight for justice, there are more than 12,000 rape test kits sitting on shelves untested in the city of Los Angeles alone. Maybe if we stand together, we can make a difference to victims like my daughter out there and have these rape test kits that are sitting on shelves and bring justice to all.

Stacy L Schroeder