Samantha Bee delivered a searing segment about the hundreds of thousands of rape kits sitting untested in evidence rooms around the country on the March 21st episode of her late night show, Full Frontal.
After first condemning Texas for auditioning for "Hoarders: Rape Kit Edition," she then called out officials for contributing to the only thing worse than making a survivor go through a rape kit just to have it collect dust: getting rid of it completely.
Bee showed the audience a map of the states where it's legal to destroy a rape kit before the statute of limitations is up:
It's all of them. All the states.
She then called out two specific public officials for standing in the way of legislation that would force the police to test the kits.
In February, Georgia state senator Renee Unterman blocked the Pursuing Justice For Rape Victims Act that would require a timely processing of rape kits, even though the bipartisan bill passed unanimously in the state House. Then, just last week, Idaho sheriff Craig Rowland said that "the majority of our rapes that are called in are actually consensual sex," and that therefore the state legislation should not have any say in how his department handles the backlog of untested rape kits.
Aside from the overwhelming evidence that testing rape kits is hugely beneficial in closing rape cases -- as Bee shows in the video below -- and despite the millions of dollars pledged by Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Vice President Joe Biden to resolve the backlog issue, there's still a ridiculous pushback in local governments when it comes to testing the kits. And Bee has no time for it. "Testing these kits is actually making your job easier," she said.
"What more do we need to do? Put a toy surprise in there like a Cracker Jack box?"
Watch the full video below.
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