This episode includes details about sexual assault and sexual assault exams.

Please take care while listening.

[Music] One of the first things Nurse Joni Owens, wants a victim of sexual assault who's at her office to know is every step of the exam is their choice.

Law enforcement can't tell them they have to have it.

Medical providers can't tell them they have to have it.

It is their decision to make.

Owens is a sexual assault nurse examiner, one of the first people some victims interact with after their assault.

And in her years of doing this work, she's learned it's crucial to make them feel safe.

The first step of giving them the opportunity to heal and move past what happened to them is to give them all of the control back.

Owens is the medical coordinator for the Mountain West SANE Alliance, and works out of a yellow brick house in downtown Glenwood Springs.

Her examination room has a single exam chair surrounded by two specialized cameras.

It's stocked with medications for STDs and the Plan B pill.

Before the exam starts, she leads victims to a cozier chair that's on the other side of the room.

Once seated, Owens offers them stones with inspirational phrases like you are not alone.

She tries to make her patients comfortable.

People come in very shut down, difficult to engage, not making eye contact, very quiet.

Sometimes you can even see physical manifestations of their trauma.

Like they might be shoulders hunched up, body, you know, tight, just in kind of a protective mode.

Oftentimes they're, you know, pretty close down and pretty, pretty traumatized.

Even though our exam is very long and detailed and somewhat physically invasive, but definitely emotionally invasive.

So the exam can take anywhere from two to four hours.

She begins by asking victims what happened to help guide her work.

I'm not an investigator.

I don't want them to tell me all of the details from beginning to end.

I really ask them to focus.

What happened to your body?

And that helps me know how to make medical decisions with them.

During the exam, Nurse Owens also takes photographs of injuries externally and internally, sometimes up to 150 photographs if a victim's injuries are extensive.

And this can be traumatic for people because it can cause them to relive how they got those injuries.

Though, she's found that often the most invasive part is the genital exam and the actual collecting of DNA evidence.

It's a long, intense process.

But by the end of the exam, their shoulders have dropped.

You know, you can see that they are relaxing throughout the exam.

But before patients leave her office, they usually have a lot of questions for her.

Their biggest concern is the evidence kit that we collected and what's going to happen with it, and when are they going to find out about it.

Who's going to contact them?

So, I have to let them know that I do turn it over to law enforcement.

And it's law enforcement's responsibility to send it to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation - their crime lab, for analysis.

That's when she has to break some difficult news.

Because the reality is nothing like an episode of Law & Order, says Owens, where cases get resolved quickly.

In the real world, in Colorado, the wait time to receive results is almost a year and a half, and sometimes even longer.

And then, you know, everything changes again, because I think they're starting to realize nothing's going to happen for a year and a half.

You can just see the shift.

As of late February, 1407 people in Colorado are waiting for DNA results from their sexual assault cases.

And that includes evidence collected from these medical exams.

Without those results, criminal investigations often stall and victims are left in limbo.

Colorado lawmakers are now taking up the issue, trying to fully understand what went wrong and how to fix it.

[Music] This is Purplish from CPR News and the Colorado Capitol News Alliance, a show about Colorado politics, policy and the 2025 state legislature.

I'm Bente Birkeland.

And I'm Andrea Kramar, a senior producer and reporter with Rocky Mountain PBS.

[Music] As you just heard, it currently takes roughly a year and a half for DNA evidence in sexual assault cases to be processed in Colorado.

That includes both what's gathered by nurses like Owens and evidence law enforcement may collect from things like clothes and bedding.

The backlog delays criminal investigations, and it leaves victims in a difficult place.

And that's because they aren't just waiting for the justice process to move forward.

For many victims, there's the fear that the perpetrator will harm them again or harm others.

Most lawmakers, like Republican Representative Matt Soper, who's a longtime member of the House Judiciary Committee, say they only learned about this backlog and the delay in the last few months.

I mean, this is huge.

I mean, they should have really been coming to us as lawmakers several years ago and pointing out this problem.

The backlog didn't happen overnight, but it's gotten worse, a lot worse.

The head of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said earlier this year that the agency also known as CBI, already had a backlog, but it doubled in the last year.

And that's due to several reasons that we'll get into in this episode.

Under Colorado's current guidelines, the state is supposed to analyze the sexual assault DNA within six months.

But that goal is a long way off right now.

[Music] The backlog is front and center at the state Capitol this session.

First of all, the sheer scale of it, but also because a state lawmaker is one of those 1400 plus people waiting for DNA results from their sexual assault cases.

J003 has been moved and displayed.

Representative Willford.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Members.

This is really hard for me to do this today.

And frankly, I'm really angry that I have to do it.

Democratic State Representative Jenny Willford shared her own story on the House floor.

She said about a year ago, she ordered a Lyft to get to her home in Northglenn after going out with friends.

And from the moment she got in that car, she said she had an uneasy feeling.

The driver allegedly asked increasingly sexual questions, and at the end of the ride he blocked her from getting out.

She said he sexually assaulted her.

Willford told her colleagues the attack has left her with debilitating PTSD.

I've had panic attacks sitting in the post office parking lot because I saw a car that looked like his car.

I have frozen and standstill in grocery store aisles because I saw someone that looked like him.

For the past year, her case, like so many others, has remained stalled with no arrest because the state has not yet processed the DNA evidence she submitted from her clothing.

And I walk through the same doors that you did to get in here today.

But I can tell you that my experience walking through this world and walking through this different, through this experience and this work is different.

It's different because I feel like I'm walking through a nightmare every day, that I have this little cloud that follows me around, reminding me that I don't have answers and I don't have justice.

Her personal experience and her willingness to speak out has raised the profile of this issue because of her job at the state legislature.

If you were going through this or somebody you knew was going through this, you, I hope would be standing down here in this well, demanding justice, demanding that CBI get their act together.

And demanding that we process rape kits immediately.

[Music] Willford's colleagues at the Capitol, across the political spectrum, say they're incensed by the backlog and the impacts these long wait times have on victims.

And they're moving forward on ways to try and get it under control.

In this episode, we'll hear from those on the front lines, from law enforcement to prosecutor to victims, about what the delays mean for justice in Colorado.

[Music] Before we get into the how we got here question, let's take a step back to talk more about why these exams can be such a critical part of the criminal justice process.

To start with, sexual assault cases are underreported, often not prosecuted.

And then when they are, they're tough cases to prove.

That's why the DNA evidence can be so key.

Hi, I'm Josh with the sheriff's office.

Im Bente.

Nice to meet.

To learn more, we traveled to Rifle and met with Josh Craine, the investigations commander for the Garfield County Sheriff's Office, where he supervises about a dozen investigators.

He says they gather all kinds of evidence, but that a lot of times, the DNA analysis is the most critical part of the investigation.

It can confirm a lot of what they have told us has happened.

It can corroborate other physical evidence we've collected.

If we have a suspect who says, no, it wasn't me at all, and we are lucky enough to obtain biological evidence from those SANE kits.

We can go back and get further evidence from a suspect and make that forensic comparison and say it was you, or you're right, it wasn't you.

Sometimes DNA is the only evidence there is in a case, especially when victims have been drugged or rendered unconscious during the alleged attack and may not know exactly what happened.

And when there's a delay in getting results, investigators often have to tell victims their hands are tied.

As we said, the average wait time for DNA results from sexual assault cases is a year and a half.

But that's just an average.

I talked to a state lawmaker who told me the longest wait time right now for one of these sexual assault kits and exams is four years.

It gets frustrating for my my detectives and my investigators to just repeatedly say, we're still waiting.

We're still waiting.

I'm sorry.

We're still waiting.

And then if we are able to present it to the district attorney's office and then by the time we go through a whole court proceeding, it could be two or three or four years later.

And sometimes victims are like, they don't want to relive that.

And we have to keep that in perspective.

And we have to help them understand that while they've moved on, we're still working in the best interest of justice for them.

You can definitely understand why years later, some victims just don't want to participate any longer.

And we also heard about how it can impact potential court proceedings and prosecutions.

We talked to Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty about that.

And he said oftentimes his office does have to wait for DNA evidence before they can decide whether to go ahead with the case, because prosecutors have an ethical duty to prove charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

And if years go by, while waiting for the DNA results, that can give defense attorneys the ammunition to undercut the case.

Because the jury will question why there was a delay between the report and charges being filed, and the defense will often point to that delay as a reflection of some lack of credibility with the victim, when in fact it's just a breakdown in the justice system.

It has nothing to do with the victim.

It's not her fault at all.

This kind of makes me think of something Elizabeth Newman told us.

She's with the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

She said the harm victims suffer doesn't just happen at the moment of the crime.

The harm happens every time you tell someone and they don't believe you, when you go to the police to report and they don't investigate, when you, you know, are waiting 517 days for your kit to be analyzed, when you are seeing of, you know, the DA not choosing to prosecute, when you finally get court case, and you don't get a conviction.

Or you get a conviction and the outcome is, you know, you feel like it's not an appropriate level of accountability.

We do not see sexual violence taken seriously in this country.

[Music] Now that we've gotten a sense of the scale of this problem, let's talk about how we got here.

And to do that, we have to first go back to 2013.

At the time, there was a lot of attention nationally on testing backlogs around the country.

And the situation here was actually worse than it is now.

Colorado's backlog at the time got up to nearly 3600 kits with unprocessed DNA evidence, some decades old and just sitting in storage.

Like many other states, Colorado passed legislation to address the issue.

One of the things the state did was mandate a statewide accounting of untested sexual assault exams.

Chris Schaefer, who's the retiring director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, told us his office did clear that backlog by 2016.

And they were able to do that in part by outsourcing some of the work to out-of-state labs.

By 2022, the state actually had a turnaround time of about 145 days, below the state's guidance of 180 days.

Schaefer says the agency had hoped to get that number even lower and was developing a plan to hire more people.

But then a couple of things happened, and as Schaefer described it, he said it was just a perfect storm.

Yeah.

So first, the agency had two DNA scientists resign.

Then seven more scientists went on extended or family leave.

So that left them nine scientists short.

Schaefer says they brought new testing staff on board, but those new hires had to go through a nearly two year training process, which made them unable to work on cases.

So by spring of 2023, that 145 day turnaround time jumped to 240 days.

And I think it just shows how quickly the backlog can exponentially increase.

Right.

And around this time, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation found themselves with another issue, a major one.

One of their own faced allegations of manipulating DNA test results.

Yes.

And this has been in the news a lot.

Yvonne ‘Missy Woods was a longtime CBI forensic scientist.

She spent nearly three decades there, and she was involved in a lot of high profile cases.

But coworkers raised red flags about her work, and in the fall of 2023, CBI began an internal investigation.

‘Missy Woods is now facing more than 100 charges.

And CBI director Chris Schaefer says his scientists had to go back and retest all of the DNA samples Woods had touched.

We had to shut down basically 50% of our DNA sciences for the better part of a year to go through and research the, the over 10,000 cases that our former scientist had worked.

So you add the circumstances with Woods into the already reduced staffing CBI was dealing with, the backlog was already developing.

Then it more than doubled to 500 days or more.

But the thing is, people outside CBI did not really know what was going on until it came out in a legislative oversight hearing in January.

Yes.

In the months leading up to that hearing, a couple of victims who had been waiting on their results were getting in touch with lawmakers.

We also had a lawmaker in this situation, and they had a lot of questions and wanted answers.

[Music] Colorado lawmakers in both parties say tackling this backlog is a top priority this session.

But as we've mentioned, it initially only came to light in a very public way at the start of the session this January.

During an oversight hearing for the Department of Public Safety, which CBI is under, CBI officials testified that the already long wait time had doubled in the last year.

The hearing shocked lawmakers in both parties.

The people who've known about this are impacted survivors at the individual level who will check in, where is my case?

And they get told, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

That's Democratic Senator Mike Weissman.

He's from Aurora and he's the vice chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A lot of us continue to dig on it.

So exactly what the solution looks like, I can't say.

We're at about the 25% mark through the session now.

But I can tell you there's a lot of interest in attacking this problem and fixing it before May.

We said most people didn't know about this.

He was one of the few people who knew what was going on before this public hearing.

He said he found out about the backlog through some victims later in the fall.

And he's one of the lawmakers working on fixing things this session.

The big thing he and his colleagues are trying to do is get CBI more resources and make sure they're more transparent with the backlog.

[Music] Lawmakers decided to let CBI keep an extra 3 million unspent dollars in its budget that otherwise would have been turned back to the state.

That is a pretty big deal given Colorado's current budget shortfall.

Typically, any money agencies don't spend does go back into the overall state budget.

But lawmakers agreed not to touch the CBI funding.

The money will allow CBI to outsource about a thousand kits to third party labs to process.

And as part of this, lawmakers are insisting on more transparency from CBI.

That includes having the agency share monthly progress reports and launching a public dashboard showing the status of cases, which is now up on their website.

[Music] At the same time, victims and advocates are putting more pressure on this issue.

How do you explain to a survivor that the kit they endured so bravely, the one that could prove their truth, was left to collect dust?

That was Kat Kimball, a 17 year old survivor, speaking at a town hall hosted by the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault at the Capitol recently.

The town hall gave victim advocates and survivors a chance to share their stories and ask CBI questions.

Ultimately, what it really did was highlight the human toll of delayed DNA results in sexual assault cases.

Each day you feel more and more powerless.

Each week you feel less and less like a human.

When my estimated processing time came and went, I spent weeks grasping at straws, attempting to get anyone to listen to me.

I don't feel comfortable turning to my family or friends at this time, but I've always been told that the law would be able to help me, and I just don't feel like it could anymore.

And it was probably one of the lowest points of my life.

You just heard from Nina Petrovic and Miranda Spencer.

CBI officials told survivors and victims that they intend to clear all 1407 backlog cases by the end of this calendar year.

We are committed to fixing this, and we're going to explain to you today, however, to fix this.

But it's going to take a lot longer for them to get to their ultimate goal of processing evidence within 90 days.

They hope to hit that benchmark within the next two years, they say.

Here's CBI director Chris Schaefer, again addressing the town hall.

But at this point, that's all it is, right?

It's talk, and I understand that.

Okay.

It is a place to start.

But what we what the state has to do for you is show that action on that plan.

And we have to back it up, and we have to show it.

And we have to show you that we do mean business and that we are going to do what we say.

There's a clear plan in place right now, but one big thing well be looking out for us if the plan works and how sustainable it is, and whether Colorado is able to keep up with this pace so that we're not having the same conversation again in a few years.

I really hope in two years we're not again reporting on this same issue.

That's it for this episode.

Purplish is a production of member supported Colorado Public Radio and the Colorado Capitol News Alliance.

The CCNA is a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun with support from news outlets throughout the state.

Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

I'm Andrea Kramar.

And I'm Bente Birkeland.

Our producer is Stephanie Wolf.

This episode was edited by Megan Verlee and sound designed and engineered by Shane Rumsey.

Purplish will be back in your feeds next week.

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This is Purplish from CPR news and the Colorado Capitol News Alliance.