A 30-year, county-wide backlog of untested sexual assault kits has been cleared, resulting in hundreds of new DNA profiles of potential offenders being entered into law enforcement databases and criminal charges being brought in a half-dozen cold cases, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office announced on Tuesday.

A final test on Friday officially cleared a massive backlog of previously untested sexual assault kits that had long-bedeviled local law enforcement officials, ending a years-long effort driven by grant funds and a hired lab to help run evidence that in some cases dated back decades.

“Every one of these untested sexual assault kits represents a victim who deserves justice,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement. “By clearing the backlog, we fulfilled a promise to every victim of sexual assault that the Orange County District Attorney’s Office will never stop fighting for victims and we will never stop fighting for justice.”

Delays in the testing of sexual assault evidence has long been a nationwide problem, with some rape kits sitting for years in police and crime lab storage facilities without testing. Experts say that learning that evidence has been sitting on a shelf for years without testing can be a traumatizing experience for sexual assault survivors.

In the past, some sexual assault kits wouldn’t be tested if a victim recanted, refused to cooperate or had their credibility questioned by investigators, causing potential criminal cases to fall apart. But experts say just getting the DNA into the law enforcement systems can link to other incidents or even identify potential suspects.

From 2000 to 2012, of the more than 4,000 rape kits that were collected by law enforcement agencies in Orange County, about 75% were never sent to the county crime lab for testing.

As the backlog grew, prosecutors with the Orange County DA’s office made a concerted push to test the untested rape kits.

In 2016, the DA office created the Orange County Sexual Assault Forensic Endeavor – also known as OC SAFE – using a $1.86 million grant from the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, a federal program focused on inventorying previously unsubmitted rape kits.

“I fought to secure money at the County so we could solve these crimes because every kit we test represents a human being who deserves justice,” Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner said in a statement. “When we test a rape kit, we tell every Orange County resident that we will not allow these atrocious crimes to go unchecked.”

Nearly 6,500 sexual assault kits from agencies were inventoried as part of the OC SAFE program, of which 3,791 were identified as previously untested. Each of the cases of untested kits was reviewed, prosecutors said, and 1,705 were determined to be eligible to be tested by the Orange County Crime Lab.

In order to “alleviate the stress” on the crime lab, the DA’s office in mid-2020 used a $328,305 grant from the California Department of Justice to contract with Bode Technology to help run the untested kits.

That agreement with Bode Technology was initially expected to clear the backlog of kits by the end of 2021, before being extended by several months due to delays in the supply chain of lab material in the midst of the pandemic.

Prosecutors say priority was given during the testing process to cases that were believed most likely to lead to criminal charges.

Among the six cold cases that authorities believe were solved by the DNA found in the untested kits was a 1993 kidnapping, rape and robbery.

On April 4, 1993, an armed man walked up to a couple sitting in a car parked on a residential street in Stanton and after falsely identifying himself as a police officer ordered the couple to drive to another location in the city. He then ordered the man out of the vehicle, prosecutors said, and sexually assaulted the woman.

The attacker drove the couple around in the stolen car for several hours before dropping them off on the side of the road in Cypress. The woman was immediately taken for a sexual assault examination, but it wasn’t until the case was reviewed in 2019 during the OC SAFE initiative that a suspect was identified.

DNA from the woman’s rape kit was entered into a national database and tied to Michael Ray Armijo, who last year was convicted of two felony counts of kidnapping to commit robbery. While the sexual assault couldn’t be charged due to the statute of limitations, Armijo still received a 24-years-to-life prison sentence.

Of the other five cases filed in connection to the backlog of sexual assault kits, some date back to the 80s and 90s, two involve suspected serial rapists, and most of the defendants are facing potential life sentences.

Protocols surrounding the processing of rape kits in Orange County have been changed in recent years to avoid the previous backlogs.

Under the old protocols, a nurse would process the sexual assault kit and then turn it over to a police investigator, who would decide whether it would be sent to the county crime lab. Now, the kits go directly from nurses to the crime lab, DA spokeswoman Kimberly Edds said.

The sexual assault unit within the crime lab has also expanded, Edds said, while the DA’s office has created a standalone unit focused on cold-case sexual assaults.

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