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The City of Memphis left almost 13,000 sexual assault kits sitting in storage for years without testing them, and now rape victims are asking a judge to certify a class action lawsuit to bring them justice.
Three women who are already suing the city over their forgotten rape kits went before a judge on Zoom Wednesday, where their lawyers argued the lawsuit should be certified for class action, Fox13 reported.
“This case will affect the 12,000 victims whose kits were untested, if the judge agrees,” attorney Daniel Lofton told Fox13. He said the group is seeking $10 million in damages.
The City of Memphis argued that the statute of limitations had run out for the class action to proceed. The lawsuit against the city was first lodged in 2014.
However, Lofton said that there were so many people whose legal rights were offended that it’s not possible for the court to prosecute the cases individually, and class action was the best way to process, according to WMC Action News.
“When the city explains we have over 12,000 rape kits collecting dust on a shelf, the only remedy is a class action,” he said.
As of March last year, the Memphis Police Department admitted the total number of sexual assault kits it had left untested, for decades in some cases, was at 12,762, Daily Memphian reported.
Police first announced the backlog in 2012, after local reporters started asking questions, according to WREG Memphis.
Terilyn Blockman is a member in the current lawsuit. She was raped in 1991 and her attacker was never found, she told WMC Action News 5. She told reporters she and other victims want justice.
“The other victims deserve justice. All these women have gone through so much and have been just completely ignored,” she said.
In March 2020, police told the Memphis City Council that they had finally tested all the kits and initiated more than 5,300 investigations from them, resulting in 550 requests for indictments at that time.
Many of the kits were linked to rapists who were not caught at the time because the kits weren’t tested, WREG reported. Some of these people went on to commit more violent attacks.
In one case, a man caught after testing the kits was linked to seven other rapes.
Victim advocates End the Backlog say the backlog of untested rape kits “represents the failure of the criminal justice system to take sexual assault seriously, prioritize the testing of rape kits, protect survivors, and hold offenders accountable.”
If you or your child is an individual who has been assaulted at school, in athletic teams, medical settings, workplaces, and organizations such as the Boy Scouts, you may be entitled to compensation even if the assault happened years ago.
Many perpetrators of sexual assault are not held criminally accountable by the systems in place.
A civil lawsuit, however, against the perpetrators and those who allowed their criminal behavior can lead to future changes and also help compensate those who were harmed. Click here for more information.
What do you think about this proposed class action against the City of Memphis? Let us know in the comments!
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