Texas lawmakers are working to draft legislation that they hope will make it possible to hold more people accountable for sexual assault, after a recent audit outlined several reasons why prosecuting these crimes can be difficult and recommended solutions.
The audit, requested by state lawmakers last year, examined the investigation and prosecution processes for reported sexual assaults of both adults and children in Texas from 2014 through 2018.
From 2014 to 2018, people reported 71,274 sexual assaults to law enforcement agencies in Texas from 2014 through 2018. Those cases resulted in 23,422 arrests, and about 70% of those arrests resulted in prosecution.
“Everything that was reported here we already knew, to a certain extent,” said State Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin. “But it was clarified and validated by the audit.”
Howard said her office is already working with the statewide Sexual Assault Survivors’ Task Force, established during the last legislative session, to draft legislation that requires more police and prosecutor training in working with people experiencing trauma, and prohibits having victims take a polygraph tests.
Howard said she also wants to remove law enforcement’s ability to deny sexual assault examinations to survivors because they think they made false reports.
“The whole point here is … to create policies that can make a difference and improve the process of how we treat sexual assault cases,” Howard said.
Additionally, the audit pointed out that it’s difficult in Texas to track statewide sexual assault reports and arrests. Data collected on reported incidents are maintained by a different system than the system that monitors arrests, prosecutions and court dispositions.
“Reported incidents cannot be traced to arrests. … Furthermore, the information on certain outcomes of sexual assault investigations, such as those that do not lead to an arrest, is not collected at a statewide level,” says the report from the Texas State Auditor’s Office.
Fixing this problem will also be a goal of Howard’s in the upcoming Legislative session, she said.
Howard wants to “make sure we have a statewide system that allows us to identify what is going on with a case from beginning to the end.”
Proving that a suspect acted without consent can be difficult at times, the report says. Additionally, victims are sometimes reluctant to participate in the investigation and prosecution process because of fear, embarrassment and distrust of the criminal justice system.
Recommendations included training detectives and prosecutors on victim-centered and trauma-informed practices when they engage with victims of sexual assault. The report also advocated for improving communication between investigators and prosecutors and creating specialized units, staffed with detectives and prosecutors trained for investigating and prosecuting sexual assaults.
The Travis County district attorney’s office has a specialized sexual assault unit, within its special victims unit. Before 2018, sexual assault cases were assigned to various prosecutors in the office. Since 2018, a specialized team of prosecutors and support staff — who receive regular training in the area of sexual assault — work closely with law enforcement and victim services as these cases are investigated.
State Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, has already filed a bill for consideration that would make it clear that a sexual assault occurs if “the actor knows the other person is intoxicated” to the point where he or she is incapable of understanding what’s happening or if “the actor knows that the other person has withdrawn consent to the act, and the actor persists.”
The audit recommended training investigators on on cell phone evidence and cognitive bias issues could improve prosecutions, prosecutors across the state told auditors.
Additionally, police and prosecutors should regularly inform victims of case statuses and educate them about the process, the audit said.
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