IV. Sexual Violence in Los Angeles County [4]

Rape is a crime with serious consequences, and it demands serious attention. The potential physical, social, and mental health consequences of rape for a survivor include genital and other injuries, sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancy, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, anxiety, depression, lasting fears about personal safety, and other immediate and potentially long-term effects on her physical and psychological health and well-being. The experience and consequences of sexual assault are different for every survivor, and for some the consequences are profound and enduring.[5] One survivor told Human Rights Watch, "If you have not been raped, I think it is impossible to understand how traumatic it is. But to give people an idea, I tell them that my rape happened a decade ago, and I still don't feel like myself. I am changed forever."[6]

Reported Rapes

At least 1,474 individuals reported being sexually assaulted in Los Angeles County in 2007, the last year for which Human Rights Watch has data for the entire county-an average of more than four rape reports made to the police every day.[7] These reported rape cases do not include sexual crimes committed against children. The Los Angeles area is currently experiencing an historic low in reported rapes, although it is important to note that rape is traditionally an underreported crime. Comprehensive academic studies estimate that reported rapes represent 10 to 20 percent of all rapes, and that one in every six women in the US will be the victim of a rape or an attempted rape in her lifetime.[8] According to Patricia Giggans, executive director of Peace Over Violence, an anti-violence group based in Los Angeles, "The clear consensus among government, academic, and public health experts on sexual violence is that the majority of rapes go unreported. And of the small percentage that are reported, most are not likely to go very far in the criminal justice system."[9]

Arrest Rates

While reported rapes have decreased significantly in Los Angeles County in the past decade, arrest rates have also declined. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, which contracts its policing services to 40 of Los Angeles County's 88 cities, has seen its arrest rate decline from 33 percent of all reported rapes in 1999 to 28 percent in 2007 (the last year in which data were available to Human Rights Watch).

Reported Forcible Rapes and Rape Arrests for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department[10]

The Los Angeles Police Department, which has law enforcement jurisdiction over the city of Los Angeles, has seen reported rapes decline by more than one-third since 1997. The arrest rate for rape was 25 percent of reported cases in 2007, down from a high of 30 percent in 1999. Nonetheless, the 2007 arrest rate represents a marked increase from the previous years, and a hopeful sign that the trend is reversing.

Reported Forcible Rapes and Rape Arrests for the Los Angeles Police Department[11]

In sum, over the past decade, the percentage of rapes reported to the Los Angeles County Sheriff and the Los Angeles Police Department that result in an arrest has declined. Currently, a person in the Los Angeles area who reports to law enforcement that she was raped has about a one in four chance of seeing someone arrested for the crime.

Data Limitations

In general, the collection of rape statistics in California is not as rigorous or comprehensive as necessary to understand the problem of sexual violence. Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles both collect rape statistics in a way that may inflate the arrest rate.

The California Department of Justice (CDOJ), which collects crime data from every jurisdiction in the state, narrowly defines what constitutes "rape" for reporting purposes, confining it to crimes that fit the FBI Uniform Crime Report's narrow common-law definition of rape (forcible rape which involves vaginal penetration by a penis),[12] and thus excluding a wide range of crimes that the California penal code defines as rape. At the same time, the CDOJ allows police to count under the "rape" category arrests for all crimes that would constitute rape under the state penal code.[13] In addition, arrests for rape in a given year include cases in which rapes were reported in previous years, so that the arrest rate for a given year represents arrests in all rape cases, including but not limited to those reported that year. This can have the effect of inflating the arrest rate for rape that the Police and Sheriff's Departments document in their yearly reports to the CDOJ.

It is important to note that while the CDOJ sets minimum standards for crime data collection, the nature and scope of data on rape still vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, including the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles Police Department. According to a sexual assault data tracking expert who spoke with Human Rights Watch, "The lack of standardization among states or agencies regarding sexual assault data makes it difficult to compare data from jurisdiction to jurisdiction to see what state-based sexual violence policies may be working and what ones are not."[14]

As far as Human Rights Watch can tell, no agency in Los Angeles County tracks the status, progress, and outcome of rape cases from the moment the rape is reported until the resolution of the case-making it very hard to get accurate data on the true rate of reported rapes that lead to an investigation, arrest, or other criminal justice outcome. In fact, numerous experts on sexual violence with whom Human Rights Watch spoke identified the lack of comprehensive case-tracking systems, including the tracking of forensic evidence like rape kits, as a key barrier to understanding what is happening with rape cases in the Los Angeles criminal justice system, and what effect rape kit collection and testing has on case outcomes. As Lance Gima, then-director of the California Bureau of Forensic Services, observed to Human Rights Watch, "The lack of comprehensive data on the criminal justice response to rape makes it appear that figuring out the criminal justice dynamics of rape cases [is] a low priority in California."[15]

During the course of Human Rights Watch's research into the rape kit backlog in Los Angeles, we heard stories of rape cases not leading to investigations, much less arrests. When Human Rights Watch asked a Los Angeles police officer whether all reported rape cases were guaranteed to be investigated, he replied, "Well, if she got herself killed in addition to getting raped, and then it would be like a homicide, and that definitely would get investigated. Otherwise, I don't know."[16] Another officer who spoke about rape investigations to Human Rights Watch said, "Stranger rape cases are a priority. We investigate every reported case, but after a few years on the job, you get a sense of when the story that a crime occurred is credible, and when it isn't worth pursuing."[17]

As Sharon Shelton, a director of the Los Angeles YWCA's rape crisis services, told Human Rights Watch, "We know that the likelihood of a case going to court [is] small, so we often downplay the criminal justice option to our clients. We don't discourage them from pursuing it, but we don't want them to pin their entire hopes on finding justice through the system."[18]

Role of Forensic Evidence in Rape Cases

National studies have shown that cases in which a rape kit was collected and contained DNA evidence of the offender were significantly more likely to move forward in the criminal justice system than cases in which there was no rape kit collected.[19] Studies have also found that forensic or physical evidence, such as the type of evidence stored in a rape kit, are important predictors of prosecutors' decisions to bring charges in a case.[20] There is also emerging evidence that juries have come to expect DNA evidence in order to convict a defendant.[21] These findings point to the importance of rape kit collection-and testing-in moving cases forward through the criminal justice system.

In New York City, a policy of testing every rape kit booked into evidence appears to be having a positive effect on rape arrest, prosecution, and dismissal rates. Since the policy was implemented in 2001, rape arrests have risen to 70 percent of reported cases in 2007, up from 30 percent in 1999.[22] While there are certainly other dynamics contributing to the high arrest rate for rape in New York, as one New York Police Department officer told Human Rights Watch, "Having the DNA [test results] from every rape kit I book has given me investigative leads I never would have expected. I take second looks at cases I would have dismissed, and I pass along more cases to the prosecutors. I used to think I didn't need DNA to develop a case, but it has helped me solve more cases."[23] (How New York eliminated its rape kit backlog is discussed at the end of Chapter VI.)