A special team has been working at NSW Health Pathology’s Forensic Biology/DNA lab to test hundreds of historic Sexual Assault Investigation Kits (SAIKs) using the latest technology and search for DNA matches on the state and national DNA databases.

In a lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Foren­sic & Ana­lyt­i­cal Sci­ence Ser­vice (FASS) build­ing in Lid­combe a team of 12 Foren­sic Sci­en­tists has spent two years work­ing on the SAIK Back­cap­ture Project.

A part­ner­ship with NSW Police, the team has painstak­ing­ly reassessed and exam­ined hun­dreds of stored Sex­u­al Assault Inves­ti­ga­tion Kits (SAIKs) for DNA using the lat­est tech­nolo­gies now available.

SAIKs are pro­vid­ed at the hos­pi­tal after a sex­u­al assault com­plaint is made and are used by med­ical and foren­sic exam­in­ers to col­lect evidence.

The pur­pose of the project was to bol­ster the exist­ing crim­i­nal DNA data­base, iden­ti­fy links between scenes and offend­ers, and to ulti­mate­ly gath­er intel­li­gence and fur­ther inves­tiga­tive leads.

Team Leader of the SAIK Back­cap­ture Project at FASS, Kylie Deece, (pic­tured above front row, sec­ond from left) says the SAIKs typ­i­cal­ly con­tain inti­mate swabs and items of cloth­ing such as underwear.

“With assis­tance from NSW Police, our team received more than 780 SAIKs from police sta­tions across NSW and some dat­ing back as far as 23 years.”

Ms Deece says despite the age of some of the kits, state-of-the-art DNA test­ing meth­ods avail­able at NSW Health Pathology’s Foren­sic Biology/DNA lab­o­ra­to­ries means they have been able to suc­cess­ful­ly extract DNA from the SAIKs and upload the infor­ma­tion to the NSW and Nation­al Crim­i­nal DNA databases.

“It’s been quite a suc­cess­ful project. We’ve had 310 uploads to the data­base from sam­ples that would have oth­er­wise remained in stor­age. Once pro­files are uploaded to the data­base, it can pro­vide intel­li­gence for Police includ­ing poten­tial­ly iden­ti­fy­ing ser­i­al sex­u­al offend­ers,” she explained.

Some of the fund­ing was also used to exam­ine pre­vi­ous­ly test­ed sex­u­al assault sam­ples after the orig­i­nal test­ing could not recov­er a DNA pro­file suit­able for upload to the database.

“The tech­nol­o­gy for DNA test­ing has moved on sig­nif­i­cant­ly since some of those tests were done,” she said.

“Test­ing now is much more sen­si­tive and we’re also able to tar­get DNA from the male Y chro­mo­some, which can help to iden­ti­fy offend­ers through a famil­ial match.”

Ms Deece said the sup­port of both the wider Foren­sic Biology/DNA and Receipt Unit sec­tions of FASS has been cru­cial to the project’s suc­cess – pro­vid­ing exper­tise and train­ing while con­tin­u­ing with already sub­stan­tial workloads.

She also thanked the orig­i­nal Team Leader, Diana De Losa, who set sol­id foun­da­tions to ensure the best pos­si­ble out­comes for the project.

NSW Police say the work sends a clear mes­sage to offend­ers that police nev­er stop inves­ti­gat­ing inci­dents of sex­u­al assault and abuse and it’s nev­er too late to report an inci­dent of sex­u­al assault.

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