We’ve all heard the statistics about the crime of rape: how it’s the most unreported crime, only 6 percent of rapists will spend time in jail, and at least one in six women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

The list goes on and on.

However, there’s one such statistic that is such a travesty, it’s a wonder how so few people know that it exists.

After a rape is committed and the survivor goes to the police for help, their body becomes part of the crime scene. DNA evidence is taken from the survivor’s body, which is referred to as a rape kit. If the survivor chooses to report the crime, the rape kit is used to collect evidence; however, a large majority of them go unused, which has led to an epidemic of backlogged kits.

It seems ridiculous, but it is true. Only a handful of jurisdictions, including New York City, Los Angeles and the state of Illinois, have laws requiring mandatory tests for every single rape kit that is collected. This means that in every other law enforcement jurisdictions, thousands of rape kits sit untested, many of them more than a decade old.

This astounds me.

Some reasons for the backlog’s existence include the low arrest rate for rapists. Other factors are crime labs lacking sufficient resources to test all the kits, which is understandable, but completely wrong. How is it that not every crime lab in the country has the resources?

A kit collects DNA, which can help identify who the rapist is, if they have committed a crime in the past, where they have committed crimes and other necessary information that could help lead to an arrest. It upsets me that the backlog exists, but I am so glad there are people who are working to end it.

Back in March, the NO MORE movement was launched. NO MORE is a movement that brings together all people, and organizations, who want to end domestic violence and sexual assault. One person who is heavily involved in NO MORE is my hero, actress and advocate Mariska Hargitay, star of NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

I first learned about NO MORE from Hargitay speaking during the launch of the movement, and I was inspired to learn more about it. I visited the website www.nomore.org, and I was moved by the movement’s mission to end domestic violence and sexual assault. Hargitay’s Joyful Heart Foundation, which has raised awareness about the rape kit backlog for several years, is an Executive Committee Member and Steering

Committee Member, furthering my interest in NO MORE since I am a supporter of JHF.

Since NO MORE was made public, I have been considering starting a group on campus that is devoted to raising awareness about the movement, and to help spread the mission of NO MORE. A main goal of mine would be to also raise awareness about the backlog, and start taking steps to let local law enforcement make it mandatory for all rape kits, at least in Wichita, to be tested because in all honesty, the backlog should not exist.

For more information about the backlog of untested rape kits, visit www.endthebacklog.org.