Nearly a quarter-million rape kits are estimated to be untested throughout the US

WASHINGTON (SBG) - Nearly a quarter-of-a-million rape kits are estimated to be untested throughout the US.

Megan Rondini took her own life back in 2016, just months after reporting she’d been raped.

"She always felt accused. She never felt like she was the victim."

Megan’s devastated parents were stunned to learn the Sheriff’s department in her college town closed her rape case without sending her rape kit to a crime lab for DNA analysis.

We also learned Megan’s case is not unique. Hundreds of thousands of victims nationwide never had their rape kits analyzed.

"We needed to test every kit. We needed to do a better job of tracking those things and being accountable to the public."

Matthew Gamette is the Director of the Idaho State Police Crime Lab.

The lab launched the nation’s first statewide system for victims to track the status of their rape kit at any moment, empowering survivors who are often kept in the dark regarding their cases. It also forces the state to account for every single rape kit.

"They just put their kit number into the system, into the website, and they'll be able to see what's happened with their kit."

Kristen Houser is an executive with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

“The least we can do is keep people informed about where the investigation is and communicate on a regular basis, so that they know what's happening to them.”

Houser told us adopting better procedures can do a lot more than solve just one crime. “We have to keep in mind that many offenders are serial offenders.”

In our nationwide investigation, we discovered many states have tremendous rape kit backlogs and no statewide tracking system.

The vast majority don’t even demand the testing of rape kits at all. Testing rape kits could close many other crimes, as well.

Something as simple as entering known DNA into the national database could help solve more than two million crimes that have unidentified DNA.

"The more that we're relying on forensic evidence to solve sexual assaults as well as other kinds of crimes, we need to be increasing the resources."