The main narratives of the documentary focus on four rape survivors whose rape kits were ignored in evidence lockers for years, untested and uninvestigated. That, Hargitay says, made her really mad. “I just couldn’t comprehend that in this country this was going on. That they were stockpiling rape kits…”
While all police precincts have their distinct challenges, almost every state in America shares the exact same systemic failing: a backlog of rape kits. These kits, the products of an extensive, hours-long, deeply invasive exam of victims of sexual assault (so that the material gathered can be tested against DNA in CODIS, the FBI’s database, and possibly identify a repeat offender or be linked to a piece of evidence from another crime), make up a large part of the evidence used to solve rape cases. More often than not, for a multilayered set of reasons, they end up languishing on shelves in police departments or in labs for decades.
It’s hard to imagine HBO‘s latest documentary, I Am Evidence, as being anything other than horrifying. Directed by Geeta Gandbhir and Trish Adlesic, the film sheds light on hundreds of thousands of rape kits have been left untested in police storage facilities. But instead of merely highlighting this criminal horror story, I Am Evidence stands as one of the most emotionally compelling documentaries HBO has released in years, shifting between heart-breaking revelations about the lack of justice in this country and emotionally-charged stories about survivors finally getting the justice they deserve.
“It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of rape kits sit untested in police and crime lab storage facilities across the country.” The Joyful Heart Foundation, founded by Mariska Hargitay, is working to end the backlog.
In her new groundbreaking documentary, I AM EVIDENCE, Hargitay exposes the alarming number of untested rape kits in the United States and takes a look at the reasons behind the the rape kit backlog, and what can be done to fix the problem.
Mariska Hargitay’s dedication to “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” and its viewers, has taken her in a new but related direction.
Also a producer of the Wednesday NBC series on which she’s played New York police detective Olivia Benson for 19 seasons, Hargitay focuses on a subject the drama has covered — the many untested kits submitted by rape victims — by producing the HBO documentary “I Am Evidence,” premiering tomorrow at 8 p.m. She appears early in the program, but directors Trish Adlesic and Geeta Gandbhir then turn the cameras toward victims and medical and legal professionals.
Applause broke out several times Sunday during a sold-out Freep Film Festival screening of a documentary featuring the successful fight against Detroit's massive rape-kit backlog. "I Am Evidence" premieres to a national TV audience at 8 p.m. Monday on HBO. The film gives an unblinking look at the flaws in an American justice system that let tens of thousands or more rape kits go untested for years.
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which means it’s almost time for I am Evidence, an upcoming HBO documentary produced by Law & Order: SVU actress Mariska Hargitay. As a much-needed part of the conversation around sexual assault, the film looks at the epidemic of untested rape kits in America and considers how society can better support survivors of sexual assault. Because — let’s be honest — we need to do more. Currently, an estimated hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits sit in police storage around the country, according to The Huffngton Post. (Yes, you read that right. Hundreds of thousands.) It’s bad enough that sexual assault survivors are often forced to pay for their own rape kits, but the fact that so many of them go untested is completely unacceptable.
The HBO documentary ‘I am Evidence,’ produced by actress Mariska Hargitay, follows women who reported sexual assaults and provided DNA evidence but discovered it was never tested.
You don’t matter.
That’s the message every survivor hears loud and clear when a rape kit goes untested. Behind every kit is a person ― usually a woman ― who has been brutalized in the most intimate of ways. And yet there are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits currently sitting in police storage across the country.
So, how did we get here?
As the doc depicts, Worthy and Hargitay are working together to try to change laws so that victims can be heard, prove that survivors matter, and bring humanity and justice into the sexual assault landscape. They want to educate law enforcement to deal with the neurobiology of trauma, get more SANE nurses (sexual assault nurse examiners) into hospitals so they can meet with survivors, and stop the victim-blaming attitudes that are so pervasive in our culture.
