Current trends with anonymous reporting

Abstract

In 2008, the Southern Saint Louis County, Minnesota (MN) Sexual Assault Multidisciplinary Action Response Team (SMART) introduced a regional anonymous reporting protocol for victim-survivors of sexual assault in seven local law enforcement jurisdictions including the City of Duluth Police Department (DPD). Now, when victim-survivors choose to report their assault anonymously, all identifying information, their statement about the assault, and all accompanying physical evidence are sealed in a sexual assault kit (SAK) and labeled with a unique identifier rather than their name. The Southern Saint Louis County Anonymous Reporting Protocol is believed to be one of the first of its kind in the nation. The protocol requires the community-based Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program to maintain confidential records associated with the unique identifier and local law enforcement agencies to store anonymous SAKs indefinitely. It satisfied the Violence Against Women Act's (VAWA) Forensic Medical Compliance provision, which requires that victim-survivors have access to a forensic medical examination (which includes a SAK) without making a police report. In Minnesota, anonymous SAKs are not eligible for testing by the state crime laboratory because they are not associated with a reported crime. Community-based advocates are available to assist victim-survivors who desire to convert their anonymous SAKs to a standard report to law enforcement. In 2015, the MN legislature mandated a statewide inventory of all SAKs held by law enforcement agencies. This audit answered the question of how many untested SAKs were in MN; DPD had the most. Nearly 30% of these SAKs were anonymous. In the same year, DPD secured Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) funds to address previously unsubmitted SAKs and institute comprehensive sexual assault response reform, which included an opportunity to assess this anonymous reporting protocol. This chapter traces MN's sexual assault reform efforts which led to centralized statewide storage of anonymous SAKs in 2021. It also details lessons learned on maintaining and evaluating any state's anonymous reporting option. Finally, it identifies future lines of inquiry on why victim-survivors chose to report anonymously, across what time frames they may opt to convert their anonymous report to a named reported event, and how to measure criminal justice outcomes for these conversions.