This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Salt Lake County officials are getting behind an effort to reduce a backlog of sexual-assault kits that have not been submitted for analysis.

County Council members agreed Tuesday to write a letter of support for an effort led by Julie Valentine, an assistant professor in the Brigham Young University College of Nursing, to deal with the problem. Mayor Ben McAdams also intends to express his backing in a separate letter.

Valentine is pursuing federal grants to deal with the nearly 2,700 unsubmitted sexual-assault kits around the state — almost 1,600 in the county alone — and to prepare the criminal justice system to handle additional prosecutions expected to come from the analysis of those kits.

Democratic Councilwoman Jenny Wilson said she cannot imagine how traumatic it must be for sexual assault victims to "be victimized again by the system" when kits containing potential evidence against an attacker are left unprocessed.

"This will serve Salt Lake County well," added her co-sponsor of the letter, Republican Rep. Steve DeBry, a captain in the Unified Police Department.

The issue of untested rape kits came to light last year in Salt Lake City when Police Chief Burbank acknowledged his department had laboratory results on only 21 percent of the kits in its possession, leaving almost 1,000 untested. Federal and state funding later was obtained to help reduce the backlog.

Valentine said her research showed the capital city's experience was comparable to the state as a whole. From 2003 to 2011, she said, only 20 percent of the kits collected were examined, contributing to just 6 percent of the sexual-assault cases being prosecuted.

A $750,000 legislative appropriation resulted in 1,076 kits being sent to a crime laboratory for analysis; a total of 2,690 were unprocessed at the time, she said, "so we are short $1.6 million to test those kits now coming in."

Getting kits tested is not enough, Valentine said, noting that in four other big cities where similar problems have been identified, lab testing provided evidence against alleged perpetrators in one-quarter to one-third of the cases.

Consequently, she said, "if you test, you have to build victim services, prosecution and an established multidisciplinary team to look at the whole system." It's also valuable to create a means by which "each victim has a unique identifier [number] so they can track the status of their kit," she said.

Valentine said a $1.7 million grant she would like to get would help advance the efforts of a working group in the county that includes the district attorney's office, law enforcement agencies, the Rape Recovery Center, the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault and others.

"I'm glad it's getting the attention it deserves. It's such a longstanding problem," said Councilman Arlyn Bradshaw. "It's important as a County Council that we do all we can to address this issue."

County District Attorney Sim Gill concurred that the systemwide approach advocated by Valentine was best.

"Process improvement leads to better outcomes," he said, "… not only because we benefit in Salt Lake County, but it sets the ball rolling for the rest of the state. It's one fundamental way we can be responsible to residents."

mikeg@sltrib.com, Twitter: @sltribmikeg