Sexual Assault Kit, a variant of “rape kit.”

This term refers to a person who supports victims through stages of the criminal justice process.  In some jurisdictions, victims have a right to have an advocate present when they report a sex crime.

The Oxford Dictionary defines backlog as “an accumulation of something, especially uncompleted work or matters that need to be dealt with.”  It suggests the following sentence to illustrate the meaning of the word: “The company took on extra staff to clear the backlog of work.”  For victims who surrendered their bodies to law enforcement post-rape [..]

This term can describe any lab that law enforcement uses to process forensic evidence.  States and some local agencies have their own crime labs.  Law enforcement also contracts with private labs for needed forensic work.

In a case in which law enforcement does not identify a suspect after exhausting all investigative leads, but forensic evidence is gathered from the crime scene (in a rape case, the crime scene is the victim’s body), law enforcement can process such evidence for DNA.  If a DNA profile is obtained, law enforcement can search DNA databases of offender [..]

In the context of rape kits, DNA test means a forensic test that obtains a DNA profile. There are several different methods of testing DNA, but law enforcement most often uses the Short Tandem Repeat (STR) test.  Furthermore, the FBI requires use of this technology for DNA samples submitted to CODIS, the national DNA database. Serology testing is a [..]

Some rape victims have been accused and prosecuted for false reporting when they tried to report being the victim of sexual violence.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  This is a very common result of sexual violence and institutional betrayal.

Sexual Assault Response Teams

In the context of rape cases, the statute of limitations is a legal limit on the amount of time after a crime that law enforcement can charge the suspect.