XPost: talk.politics.guns, memphis.general, talk.politics.misc   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics   
   From: kamala.harris.encourages@black.crime   
      
   As the suit over a backlog of 12,000 rape kits proceeds, two Democratic   
   lawmakers work a bill that require processing of kits within 30 days of   
   submission   
      
   Debby Dalhoff says she’s always been a happy, outgoing person around friends   
   and family.   
      
    “What they don’t know is when I sit on my back porch at night, what goes   
   through my mind,” said the 68-year-old retired FedEx manager. “It’s   
   constant. It never ends. That inner demon that you can’t get rid of until we   
   can get some closure.”   
      
   Dalhoff is one small step closer to closure — maybe — with last month’s   
   ruling by a Shelby County Circuit Court judge that the lawsuit Janet Doe v.   
   City of Memphis, over the decades-long mishandling of thousands of rape   
   investigations, could    
   proceed as a class action. This case began winding its way through the courts   
   in 2014, not long after the Memphis Police Department revealed a backlog of   
   more than 12,000 forensic rape exams, or rape kits.   
      
   Dalhoff is one of dozens who signed on to that lawsuit, and has been hoping   
   for years that it would get a class-action certification. She calls the recent   
   ruling a milestone, but only a “breather.”   
      
   She says she won’t celebrate yet, with all the work that still lies ahead.   
   Attorneys have to track down as many survivors as they can to join the class   
   action; that is, those who are still alive, because some of the mishandled   
   cases date back nearly    
   half a century.   
      
   “I’ve thought about volunteering my time from a clerical standpoint, see   
   if there’s anything I could do to help [ attorneys] build a spreadsheet, and   
   contacting these people,” said Dalhoff, over the phone from her home in   
   Memphis.   
      
   What they don't know is when I sit on my back porch at night, what goes   
   through my mind. It's constant. It never ends. That inner demon that you can't   
   get rid of until we can get some closure.   
      
   – Debby Dalhoff, sexual assault survivor   
      
   She takes a deep breath. “I shouldn’t even have to be doing all this.”   
      
   Dalhoff is tired. She’s been seeking closure for 38 years, and for nearly a   
   decade now has been doing the investigative legwork that police never did.   
   When she was 29, Dalhoff and her roommate were blindfolded, gagged, hogtied,   
   raped and tortured for    
   hours, by a man who then washed off traces of himself on them and even   
   vacuumed the house, taking the vacuum cleaner bag with him.   
      
   “Think about this, in 1985 DNA wasn’t that popular, but obviously this   
   person was someone who knew something about a cleanup, DNA. Because of that I   
   was told in the beginning of my investigation that they were looking for   
   someone possibly in law    
   enforcement, fireman, paramedic, policeman. So they always had that in the   
   back of their mind.”   
      
   Years went by, though, without any new information. When she heard about the   
   massive backlog in 2014, she started calling the police again, obtained her   
   case files and had her case reopened. In 2015, an MPD officer told Dalhoff her   
   evidence was tested,    
   but no DNA was found.   
      
   “Well, that’s a bold-faced lie,” said Dalhoff, “because [former Shelby   
   County District Attorney] Amy Weirich told me that my kit had never been   
   found, had never been tested. In fact, I was able to then obtain the documents   
   that showed where every    
   piece of my evidence, not my sexual assault kit, but [other] evidence that   
   could have had DNA on it…was all destroyed.”   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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