Lawmakers advance sexual assault reform bills

From testing the rape kit backlog to eliminating or extending the statute of limitations for certain sex crimes, sexual assault reform bills are moving quickly through the Washington state Legislature.

These are efforts that have gone on for years in Olympia but failed. However, during this session — in the wake of the Me Too movement – they are picking up steam.

Two of the bills passed the House this week.

The first, SHB 1231, comes from Republican Rep. Dan Griffey, who has tried for the last four years to end the statute of limitations for felony sex crimes. His bill to do that across the board died in committee this session, but the pared down version, 1231, passed out of the House this week. It eliminates the statute of limitations for eight sex crimes involving victims 16 years old and younger, including rape, molestation, and exploitation. It extends them to 20 years for most other sex crimes involving adults, with the exception of third degree rape and incest, which would be extended to 10 years.

For Rep. Griffey, this is a very personal battle. His wife was sexually abused as a child by her stepfather and ran up against the statute of limitations by the time she was able to report it. Twenty years later, the Griffey’s daughter survived a horrific attack.

“Our daughter was raped and left for dead in Anchorage, Alaska,” Griffey explained through tears on the House floor.

“The pain that I felt was terrible, but the pain and the shame that my wife felt by thinking that she didn’t do enough to protect our daughter – we’ll never get over in our family,” he said.

SHB 1231 passed nearly unanimously, with just five no votes — including from Democrat Nicole Frame — who, despite suffering her own sexual abuse as a child, had concerns about ending the statute of limitations for sex crimes against kids committed by kids.

“If we raise the statute of limitations for those who are juveniles when they commit offenses and they are brought to term for their crime – they’re held accountable for their crime when they’re 40, 50, 60 years old – what do we do with a 60-year-old who is being prosecuted for a crime they committed when they were 14, 15, 16 years old,?” Frame said.

Griffey says he’ll work with Frame as the bill makes its way through the Legislature to try to address those concerns, but at this point, is cautiously optimistic this is finally going to be the year this gets done.

Griffey also said he would be back with legislation in future years for his ultimate goal, which is to eliminate the statute of limitations for sex crimes altogether. However, he says he’ll likely take a break next year because bringing this type of legislation up is a trigger for sexual assault survivors.

Another bill passed out of the House this week that would help clear Washington state’s rape kit backlog. For the first time, this bill [SHB 1166] mandates that all of those more than 8,000 rape kits — some decades old — be submitted for testing. It also sets deadlines for testing and creates a new high-tech lab that will cut testing turnaround times from about a year and a half to 45 days.

Democratic Rep. Tina Orwall has worked for years to get this done. She delivered an emotional speech on the House floor ahead of the vote.

“We’ve tested about 1,800 kits since 2015 and we’ve already identified four serial rapists,” Orwell said. “One was of a girl in 2007 who was brutally raped for two days and her kit sat on a shelf for 10 years. And there’s just so many more survivors who are living in fear that we can help get them justice … we can fix this.”

Republican Rep. Michelle Caldier, a survivor of sexual abuse, agrees, calling the state’s lack of progress on the rape kit backlog embarrassing.

“When I first joined the Legislature five years ago, I was pretty surprised as to how many thousands of rape kits just sat there untested,” Caldier said ahead of the vote. “I thought, well, for sure this would be a priority for our state … and yet here we are, five years later and we still have not made testing rape kits a priority for our state by funding them. I’m embarrassed. Time’s up. We need to make sexual assault survivors a priority.”

The bill also includes a sexual assault survivor rights, including the right to have a rape kit done at no cost and consult with an advocate, among other things. It also requires new training for sexual assault investigators.

The bill cleared the House unanimously this week and now heads to the Senate. It has a $13 million dollar price tag, primarily to cover the cost of new high tech laboratory and the staff needed to dramatically cut the time it takes to test the kits and clear the backlog. Supporters stress passing the bill won’t mean anything unless the funding is also approved in the budget process.

Both of these bills are now in the Senate for consideration. Another bill from Orwall [SHB 1002] that redefines the crime of rape in the third degree has already cleared the House last month and is scheduled for a committee vote in the Senate next week.

Rape in the third degree is a charge meant for sexual assaults involving drugs or alcohol, which under current law, can only be prosecuted when a victim can show they did not consent and expressed they were not consenting through words or conduct.

Rape survivor and advocate Leah Griffin says that’s a problem.
“The problem is that if you are drugged or incapacitated, there’s no way to really express with words or conduct that you don’t want to be raped,” Griffin explained.

She knows from personal experience.

“Take my case specifically. I had drugs that were found in my system in the toxicology report that I did not knowingly or willingly take. I had internal injuries as a result of my rape, and still, because I had flashes of memory of the event, the prosecutor said that that shows that I wasn’t unconscious enough to be incapacitated. But because I was not capable of resisting or fighting back [that meant] I did not express clearly with my words or actions that I did not want to have intercourse,” Griffin said, explaining that was part of the reason her attacker was not prosecuted.

SHB 1002 changes the standard by removing language in the law so that only yes means yes, and you don’t have to prove you said no or fought back hard enough.

“This bill is really wonderful,” Griffin said. “It means that some survivors will end up getting justice.”

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