Going to the police or a hospital after a rape is immeasurably difficult for some. There’s a stigma, and victims may fear mistreatment at the hands of law enforcement or hospital personnel.

But advocates and others say newly introduced home rape kits are roughly as useless as the boxes they come in. There’s no guarantee self-collected evidence is admissible in court, and the kits aren’t nearly as comprehensive as those offered by the state.

In fact, earlier this month, Connecticut’s Attorney General, William Tong, joined other attorneys general and sent letters to two DIY rape kit companies, MeToo, which is based in Brooklyn, and New Jersey-based PRESERVEkit, to determine if the organizations violated Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act. That law, which was adopted nearly 50 years ago, could determine whether the kits can be sold in Connecticut. The companies have until Oct. 21 to answer questions about their products.

“We take this matter extremely seriously,” Tong said in a press release. “Efforts to profit off survivors’ trauma do a grave disservice to us all.”

In fact, commodifying others’ trauma and fear is big business—or it can be.

The MeToo kit isn’t yet on the market. A co-founder of PRESERVEkit, which was available on Amazon for $29.95 but has since been removed, insists on the company’s website that her organization never claimed evidence collected with their kit would be admissible in court. Nor does PRESERVEkit seek to replace nurses or doctors who are specially trained in evidence collection, she said.

CT sexual assault evidence collection kit.

Rape kits provided free by the state involve a 12-step regimen that includes a detailed description of the event; a special mat the victim stands on to remove clothing, which is ultimately bagged and used for evidence; multiple swabs and a comb to collect pubic hairs for evidence, said Asia Nhatavong, justice involved advocacy coordinator at Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence. Before evidence is collected, the victim must give consent. In fact, the victim gives consent (or not) at each step, said Nhatavong. And the specially trained doctor or nurse who collects the evidence does not leave the room until the exam is completed.

In addition, an advocate stays with the victim through the entire process, which can last five hours. Collecting evidence in private cuts the victim off from much-needed support and services.

“Victims are isolated already,” said Lucy Nolan, the Alliance’s director of policy and public relations. When a person comes in for a rape kit, advocates and others can help them with other resources, said Nhatavong.

By comparison, the DIY kits generally include two steps: swabs and spit tests.

The last time rape kits made the news in Connecticut was 2015. There was a shameful backlog of nearly 1,200 kits that had not been tested scattered around the state. That same year, legislators passed and then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed a law that requires rape kits be sent to the state crime lab within 10 days of collection, and tested within two months. (Victims have five days after the assault to be tested with a rape kit.)

The result of that law is that now the state essentially has no backlog, said Nolan. And the rape kits the state uses are stamped with a barcode, said Nhatavong. That way the kits can be tracked.

In the DIY advertising, home rape kit companies say that their products are designed for the 77% of rape and sexual assault victims who do not report the crime to the authorities. The designer of the MeToo kit has even said that having a home kit on hand could serve as a deterrent against rape.

Nolan says no and points to the shoebox-sized state rape kit on a table in front of her.

“Look at this,” she said. “This is what we know can work in courts.”

If you have been sexually assaulted call the statewide sexual assault hotline at: 1-888-999-5545.   For more information click here.

Susan Campbell is a distinguished lecturer at the University of New Haven. She can be reached at slcampbell417@gmail.com.

One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives, according to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. People ages 12 to 34 are at the highest risk for rape and sexual assault.

Detective Brendan Gibbs of the New York Police Department said he has investigated 40 to 50 sexual assault cases during his 13 years on the police force. He said the victims have usually ranged in ages from 15 to 17. The victims are mostly Hispanic females who have been assaulted by a relative or a person who is very close to the family, he said.

Antonio (second from left) with classmates Owen, Casmir and Brady.

The MeToo movement, which was founded in 2006 by Tarana Burke to help encourage women to go public about being sexually assaulted, has gained momentum due to the scandal involving Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and the use of #MeToo.

Though this movement has gained momentum, Gibbs said he has not seen a correlated increase in the number of sexual assault reports he’s received.

“In my experience, since the #MeToo movement, we haven’t seen any increase in reported sexual assault cases,” Gibbs said. “I believe this may be [because] the immediate area … I work in is outside of the entertainment industry.”

To investigate and work with sexual assault victims, police must complete a basic six-month training program at the police academy. Gibbs said that when you are promoted to detective, you must go through another four weeks of training and are sent to review certain skills that you learned over the years.

Gibbs added that if police feel that complaints or crimes are worth looking into, they report them to the sex crimes division, which handles such allegations in the NYPD.

Antonio Rendón is a junior at Achievement First Hartford High School.

A new University of North Dakota study found that 1 in 3 male students said they would force a woman to have sexual intercourse if they thought they could get away with it.

That’s rape, isn’t it? By North Dakota’s definition, forcing anyone to have sexual contact is the legal definition of rape. But researchers didn’t use the word “rape” in the study until later. Instead, they asked 73 college men if they would ever act on intentions to “force a woman to sexual intercourse” if they could escape detection, to which 31.7 percent said yes. When researchers did use the word rape, the numbers dropped to 13.6 percent.

If both numbers seem unbearably high, they are. And they are borne out in other research, most notably that of the United Nations, which in 2013 conducted a rare, global survey of just over 10,000 men because, as the report noted, “rape perpetration is under-researched.” Those findings, too, were astonishing. The prevalence of rape ranged from 6 percent (in Bangladesh) of the population to 41 percent (in Papua New Guinea). Some 16 percent of the men surveyed said they had raped four or more women. Rapes occurred most frequently in cultures where women are generally seen as less-than. Just 23 percent of the men who admitted to rape ever spent time in prison for their crime.

In that study, too, “rape” was not used in the questionnaire. There, too, “force” was the word of choice.

It’s sad that these men admitted to forcing sexual intercourse, but shied away from the word rape. But that is a kind of dangerous semantics played out in officialdom, as well. The Department of Justice only just updated its definition of rape for purposes of data collection three years ago. Prior to that, data collectors relied on a definition from 1927.

The word gets further parsed because what constitutes rape depends on your zip code. The definition of rape varies from state to state, and what has resulted from this patchwork approach is an upside-down world where perpetrators too often remain free, and victims have their lives upended.

A new documentary, “The Hunting Ground,” explores rape culture on campuses and was produced by the same people who brought you “The Invisible War,” which explored rapes in the military. The latter movie was an Academy Award nominee in 2013. Such efforts are incredibly important, because without more understanding of the crime, rape remains one of this country’s least reported crimes. That’s particularly true for college rape. By some estimates, 90 percent of on-campus rapes go unreported.

A student rally at the University of Connecticut.

Beyond the emotional toll that rape takes on individuals and on society, the National Sexual Violence Center estimates that rape costs $151,423 per incident in legal bills, lost productivity, health care bills, and third-party costs such as insurance. That’s roughly $127 billion a year.

Last year, the University of Connecticut paid $1.3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by five women who’d said the school hadn’t acted appropriately after the women – students all – filed claims of sexual assault on campus.

The university denied any wrongdoing, but the school was put on a federal Department of Education list of 55 schools with open sexual violence or harassment investigations. The department’s Office for Civil Rights is entrusted with making sure schools stay within the legal boundaries set by Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender.

Those University of North Dakota researchers intend to revisit this topic, with a bigger study. So far, they have said that men who are motivated to rape would do well with personalized prevention programs – but first the men have to admit that “forcible sexual intercourse” is and always will be rape.