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In FY2016, SAKI awarded the Orange County District Attorney's Office a grant in the amount of $1.9 million, which it used to inventory, submit, and test approximately 3,580 SAKs. The office also used the funds to create a multidisciplinary community response team and develop an automated tracking system.
For more information on the specific SAKI awards for this site, see the table below.
| Year | Amount | Purpose Area |
|---|---|---|
| FY2016 | $1,864,651 | Comprehensive Approach to Unsubmitted Sexual Assault Kits |
Please direct all media inquiries to:
Charges filed in 6 California cold cases after sexual assault kit backlog cleared
— NBC News, Jun 29, 2022
"Orange County authorities have cleared a backlog of untested sexual assault kits going back decades and the results led to the filing of charges in six cold cases, the district attorney’s office announced Tuesday. “Every one of these untested sexual assault kits represents a victim who deserves justice,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in the statement.
The testing resulted in hundreds of new DNA profiles being uploaded to law enforcement databases in the county and to the filing of criminal charges in six cold cases."
DNA leads to murder conviction in 1980 killing of 79-year-old Anaheim woman
— Christopher Goffard, LATimes.com, Feb 22, 2022
In one of Anaheim’s oldest cold-case murder prosecutions, an Orange County Superior Court jury on Tuesday convicted a former long-haul trucker, Andre Lepere, of her murder. Lepere, 64, had been living in retirement in Alamogordo, N.M., when he was arrested last year, linked to the crime by evolving DNA technology. Confronted with the DNA results in court, Lepere did not dispute that it was his semen found in Hagenkord’s body, but he denied raping or killing her.
Man sentenced for 1993 crimes as OC works to clear backlog of untested sexual assault kits
— Alma Fausto, Orange County Registry, Apr 14, 2021
Arrest made in case from 1993 based on CODIS hit from testing previously unsubmitted SAKs.
Orange County Crime Lab pushing to get rape kits turned in and tested
— Kelly Puente, The Orange County Register, Sep 6, 2016
A county-wide push to test untested rape kits in Orange County, California has led to 11 new investigations so far. This year, the California’s Sexual Assault Victims’ DNA Bill of Rights went into effect, recommending all rape kits be processed within 120 days. The Orange County lab has tested 1,000 kits from the initial goal of 3,000 submitted so far. To learn more about what the County of Orange is doing to combat sexual assault, read the full article.
Funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative aims to create a coordinated community response that ensures just resolution to sexual assault cases. Through this program, funding is provided to support multidisciplinary community response teams engaged in the comprehensive reform of jurisdictions approaches to sexual assault cases resulting from evidence found in previously unsubmitted sexual assault kits.
