Maryland Sexual Assault Kit Initiative

​​The National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative is a federal grant program administered by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) that provides funding to support multidisciplinary community response teams to inventory, track, and expeditiously test previously unsubmitted sexual assault kits; produce necessary protocols and policies to improve collaboration among laboratories, police, prosecutors, and victim service providers; provide resources to address the sexual assault investigations and prosecutions that result from evidence and CODIS hits produced by tested sexual assault kits and optimize victim notification protocols and services.

An unsubmitted sexual assault evidence kit is a sexual assault evidence kit that has not been submitted to a forensic laboratory for testing and analysis using CODIS-eligible DNA methodologies.​​

A MD SAKI grant kit is a sexual assault evidence kit that was collected on or before April 30, 2018, that has not been submitted to a forensic laboratory for testing.​​

A partially tested sexual assault evidence kit is a kit that was submitted to a forensic laboratory that received serology-only testing or was tested using outdated DNA testing methods that cannot be uploaded into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).​

If you had a sexual assault evidence kit collected on or before April 30, 2018, your SAEK may be one of the unsubmitted SAEKs included within the MD SAKI grant. Sexual assault victims should contact the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault at 833-364-0046 or email [email protected]​ to determine if their kit is a MD SAKI grant kit.

MCASA has a page with list of community sexual assault programs​ in the state.​

An anonymous sexual assault evidence kit is a kit that was collected during a forensic examination at a hospital or medical facility from a victim who chose not report the sexual assault to law enforcement for criminal investigative purposes (i.e., file a police report).

Under the current MD SAKI grant funding, a portion of the unsubmitted sexual assault evidence SAEKs will be tested. With over 6,000 unsubmitted SAEKs in the state, the SAEK Committee is committed to requesting additional funding until all SAEKs that require testing are submitted for analysis. There are however, circumstances in which certain SAEKs will not be tested (such as anonymous SAEKs​). For more information about which SAEKs​ will be submitted for testing, view the SAEK testing flow chart document - PDF​.​

For the majority of cases, if the victim reported the assault to law enforcement, that is interpreted as consent to test their kit. If the victim did not report to law enforcement, the kit will not be tested. If the victim originally consented by reporting the sexual assault to law enforcement, but later withdrew their consent for analysis, the kit will not be tested. The victim's withdrawal of consent must not be influenced by the law enforcement agency and must be thoroughly documented by the agency and the agency must follow-up with the victim in accordance with Md. Code. Crim. Proc. §11-929(c) (2020).​​​

Testing is already underway. The Maryland State Police Forensic Sciences Division negotiated a contract with Bode International, a private accredited lab, to test Maryland's MD SAKI grant SAEKs. The testing process is complex and can take anywhere from weeks to months to complete the process for each kit. We will provide a general overview of the SAKI grant test results as soon as testing is complete. Please check the Data and Results​ page.​​