Around 2,000 sexual assault kits are currently sitting on shelves waiting to be tested in West Virginia.

Some of those kits have been there for more than a year while others have been waiting for five years.

In an initiative to clear the backlog of these kits and bring closure to each victim, U.S. Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., helped bring around $3 million in federal grants to 16 counties in West Virginia, including Marion, Monongalia and Harrison.

On Tuesday, McKinley hosted a rape kit training symposium for the West Virginia Sexual Assault Kit Initiative at the FirstEnergy Building at the I-79 High Technology Park in Fairmont.

The symposium brought law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys together to discuss what the funding would be used for.

McKinley said the issue of sexual assault kits in West Virginia not being tested has many factors including lack of funding, not prioritizing and not enough manpower. He also mentioned there is only one crime lab in West Virginia handling evidence from more than 80 law enforcement agencies.

“It’s not just a West Virginia problem,” McKinley said. “Across the nation there are more than 200,000 rape kits sitting on the shelf waiting to be tested. I can’t imagine the anguish the victim of an assault must go though as they wait to find out when this person who assaulted them is going to be prosecuted.”

With the grants, around $1.1 million will go to the West Virginia Division of Criminal Justice and Community Service. The funding will support inventory, training, protocol development, database development, staffing and overtime.

Around $1.7 million will go to the West Virginia State Police Forensic Laboratory for testing, review and Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) upload of 2,400 sexual assaults kits.

“When someone has been hurt like that, we need to respond better,” McKinley said.

The initiative started after Detective Brandi Alderman with the Wheeling Police Department talked to McKinley about the backlog of sexual assault kits. He said she presented the issue, and he followed up on it along with other congressmen including U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins, R-W.Va.

Attending the symposium Tuesday was Marion?County Prosecuting Attorney Jeffrey Freeman. Having worked with the initiative for a while, Freeman said it’s important not only for the prosecution in a case to have timely evidence tested but also for the victim.

“Any amount of time that goes by, it’s just that much longer that a wound is untreated and unresolved for a victim,” he said. “The sooner we get the evidence, the better for the victim, in my opinion.”

Freeman said he hopes this initiative will clear the backlog of untested kits and help prosecutors across the state.

“Most of the untested kits are open cases,” he said. “I think it will open up a new avenue of ways to close cases and prosecute sexual offenders, and once the backlog is gone, I hope it won’t get to this point again.”

Also attending the symposium was Fairmont Police Chief Steve Shine.

Going into the discussion, Shine said he had questions about the initiative and was hoping to get answers.

Shine said the department was asked to send untested sexual assault kits to the crime lab along with kits that had already been tested. He was concerned with why the initiative wanted tested kits.

“I have no issue going through and providing them with untested kits,” Shine said. “We started to comply with their requests beginning in April. If they’re already backlogged, why would they want more kits from us that have already been tested?”

Shine said the department is going to continue to comply with the initiative but he hopes his questions can be answered.

“It bugged me that they talked for an hour and 50 minutes about the program and other unrelated matters and I wished they allotted more time for the audience to ask more than five questions of the panel,” he said.

Echoing Freeman, Shine said “it’s horrible” what victims of sexual assault have to go through and the time that they have to wait for closure.