MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Debby Dalhoff knows firsthand the pain and anger of waiting for justice after she said she was sexually assaulted in 1985.
“There’s not a day that goes by that it doesn’t cross my mind, literally,” Dalhoff said. “It’s agonizing. I wanted justice for myself so bad.”
Dalhoff said in 2014, after the Memphis Police Department confirmed it had discovered thousands of untested rape kits, she had hoped her kit was there. But to her shock, it wasn’t. Dalhoff said she and other survivors’ kits were destroyed.
While the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) bulked up staffing to speed up the existing rape kit backlog, some Memphis city council members said that’s not good enough.
“This a step toward closure - for whether it’s a homicide, whether it’s a rape, whether it’s an aggravated assault; victims deserve closure,” Martavius Jones Memphis City Council Chairman said.
Earlier this year Jones and others proposed a new crime lab right here in the bluff city to speed up DNA testing and fast-track justice for sexual assault survivors. That measure failed.
Supporters said it was necessary after news emerged that Cleotha Abston, charged with raping and killing Eliza Fletcher last September, hadn't been charged in a separate 2021 rape case of another woman, Alicia Franklin, because of a delay in processing of a sexual assault kit.
“Something that may have been avoided had we had the proper crime lab,” Jones said. “If we had a sense of urgency with a rape kit that was already in waiting, if you would, prior to Mr. Henderson victimizing Mrs. Fletcher.”
Longtime survivor Dalhoff said the Abston case and many others is proof both the city and state must continue efforts to get more tests cleared faster.
“I suffer more not from my criminal attack,” Dalhoff said. “I suffer more from what has happened to me with this city and the way my case was treated, and these other victims’ cases have been treated. I’m glad that there’s some process. I just think that this is so slow-moving that it inflicts more pain on the victims.”