“Re-victimized”.
This is how a woman who was sexually abused felt, her lawyers say, whose DNA taken from her rape kit was later used by police to charge her with a crime. A rape kit is a material container used to collect forensic evidence after a sexual assault.
As a result, he filed a lawsuit against the city of San Francisco in the United States and its police.
The anonymous woman gave police a sample of genetic material in 2016 after she was sexually abused, according to the court file.
However, the police kept the DNA on file without his consent and cross-referenced the entire database while investigating the crimes.
Last December, the woman was arrested in one of these investigations. However, the charges against him were later dropped.
judicial process
The lawsuit alleges that police have a “standard practice” (currently under review) of putting the DNA of crime victims into a permanent database without their knowledge.
“Officers analyze victims’ DNA for matches in all criminal investigations where genetic material is recovered, with no reasonable basis to suspect that these victims were somehow connected to them. [outras] crime scene,” his lawyers wrote.
“[Ela]A survivor of sexual assault has been victimized again by this unconstitutional practice,” they added.
The lawsuit alleges that the woman, known only by the pseudonym Jane Doe, was subjected to thousands of DNA analyzes over the course of six years.
After she was sexually abused, she agreed to have a DNA sample taken to aid the investigation, but officers believed the sample would not be used for any other purpose, according to court documents.
fear and anxiety
The woman is suing the city and county of San Francisco, which includes the chief of police, crime lab workers, and dozens of unidentified defendants.
His lawyers say this incident has caused stress, fear, anxiety and loss of reputation.
“This is the highest level of government abuse to use the most private and personal thing we have, our genetic code, to try to link us to a crime without our knowledge,” his lawyer told the Associated Press news agency.
The case first surfaced earlier this year? The use of sexual assault victim DNA in other investigations has sparked outrage.
The state district attorney dropped the charges when he learned of the circumstances behind the DNA evidence, and the San Francisco police chief said he would change procedures to prevent this from happening again.
Since then, California has also passed a bill banning the use of this type of DNA in the state, but the law still needs to be signed into law by the governor.
– This text was published at https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-62899790.
source: Noticias
