By State Rep. David Steffen
To the editor: For 30 years, politicians and an unresponsive bureaucracy failed to deliver justice for thousands of Wisconsin sexual assault survivors. Just a short time ago, over 6,000 rape kits went ignored and entombed in storage rooms and evidence lockers around the state. Victims abandoned, crimes unaddressed. This failure went unresolved by Republicans and Democrats alike for over a generation. This sad story will go down as one of the worst public safety and victims rights failures in our state’s history, and the failures that led to and furthered this situation need to be properly understood. Similarly, the decisions and leaders that helped us exit this period must also be part of its history.
After decades of failures and political finger-pointing, it was Attorney General Brad Schimel who led the effort to reconstruct our sexual assault kit handling and processing system. In 2017, Attorney General Schimel created the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, which retooled the myriad of challenges plaguing the process. He worked personally with legislators to enact structural improvements and secure the necessary funding to fix the problem. As a result, Wisconsin now has one of the most responsive and respected sexual assault kit processing systems in the country.
Political campaigns often distort the truth. However, this particularly real story involving and impacting so many sexual assault survivors should not be misrepresented. The problems and the problem-solvers need to be accurately represented to honor the victims who endured it and ensure it never happens again. Regardless of your preference in the upcoming Wisconsin State Supreme Court election, it is important to know that Brad Schimel was a hero in this story. His leadership led to the resolutions of Wisconsin’s 30-year history lesson involving untested sexual assault kits.