The Wisconsin Department of Justice is committed to supporting survivors of sexual assault and holding offenders accountable.
Through the Wisconsin Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, Wisconsin DOJ reviewed cases in which the testing of evidence from previously unsubmitted sexual assault kits resulted in the identification of DNA associated with someone other than the survivor. This review helped lead to prosecutions in certain cases, including the prosecution of Matthew Crockett, who was linked to multiple previously untested sexual assault kits and sentenced to 18 years of initial confinement following his guilty plea to three counts of 2nd degree sexual assault and two counts of false imprisonment.
In December 2021, Governor Evers signed into law legislation the Attorney General's Sexual Assault Response Team played a key role in developing that was designed to prevent a future backlog of untested sexual assault kits. Under this legislation:
- When a health care professional collects sexual assault evidence, a victim will have the choice to report to law enforcement or not.
- If the victim chooses not to report to law enforcement, the health care professional will send the kit to the state crime laboratories for storage within 72 hours.
- The crime lab will then store the kit for up to 10 years, or until the victim decides to report to law enforcement.
- If a victim does choose to report to law enforcement, the health care professional will notify law enforcement within 24 hours after collecting the sexual assault kit.
- The law enforcement agency then has 72 hours to collect the kit from the health care professional, and then 14 days to send the kit to the state crime laboratories for analysis.
Legislation regarding a statewide sexual assault kit tracking system was also signed into law in December 2021, and on May 25, 2022, Attorney General Kaul announced the launch of a tracking system in Wisconsin . With the launch of that system, Track-Kit, sexual assault kits collected by a sexual assault nurse examiner in Wisconsin are tracked in an online system that allows survivors to follow the location of their kit through the testing process.