Reprehensible radical leftist Dane County Judge Susan Crawford is lying about Wisconsin’s rape kit history. During the course of her campaign for Wisconsin Supreme Court and in her career as an attorney, she has proven with her words and her actions that she is unfit to serve on the state’s highest court.
Clearly, there is only one qualified choice on April 1 – Judge Brad Schimel.
State Representative David Steffen sets the record straight in his below op-ed.
Campaigns shouldn’t re-write rape kit history
For 30 years, politicians and an unresponsive bureaucracy failed to deliver justice for thousands of Wisconsin sexual assault survivors. Just a short time ago, over 6,000 rape kits went ignored and entombed in storage rooms and evidence lockers around the state – victims abandoned, crimes unaddressed. This failure went unresolved by Republicans and Democrats alike for over a generation. This sad story will go down as one of the worst public safety and victim rights failures in state’s history. The failures that led to and furthered this situation need to be properly understood. Similarly, the decisions and leaders that helped us exit this period must also be part of history.
After decades of failures and political finger pointing, It was Attorney General Brad Schimel who let the effort to reconstruct our sexual assault kit handling and processing system. In 2017, Attorney General Schimmel created the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, which retooled the myriad of challenges plaguing the process. He also worked with legislators to enact structural improvements and secure the necessary funding tofix the problem. As a result, Wisconsin now has one of the most responsive and respected sexual assault kit processing systems in the country.
Political campaigns often distort the truth. However, this particular real story involving and impacting so many sexual assault survivors should not be misrepresented. The problems and problem solvers of this period of our state’s history needs to be accurately represented to honor the victims who endured it and ensure it never happens again.
Regardless of your preference in the upcoming Wisconsin State Supreme Court election, it is important to know that Brad Schimel was a hero in this story. His leadership led to the resolution of Wisconsin’s thirty-year history lesson involving untested sexual assault kits.
State Representative David Steffen was the lead author of multiple laws that reformed the handling and processing of sexual assault kits in Wisconsin.
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