SAN FRANCISCO — Years after a San Francisco woman submitted a rape kit after she was sexually assaulted, her DNA was used to charge her with a crime.
In an exclusive interview with “CBS Mornings,” the woman (who asked us not to identify her by name) says she gave her DNA to San Francisco police after being raped in 2016 in hopes of convicting the suspect. Police, by their own admission, added it to their criminal database – then used it to arrest and charge her with theft last year.
“I was in jail for 14 days,” she said.
The woman (whom we are referring to as Jane Doe) said she had had no privacy concerns about sharing her DNA.
Correspondent Janet Shamlian asked, “If you had known your DNA was going into a general database, would you have been more hesitant about submitting it as part of a sexual assault?”
“Yes, absolutely,” she replied.
“Would you have submitted it?”
“No, I would not.”
The charges were dropped after the district attorney learned how the evidence was obtained.
Now, attorney Adante Pointer is filing a federal civil rights lawsuit on Doe’s behalf against the City and County of San Francisco and some police department employees, claiming use of her DNA was unlawful search-and-seizure.
“What you have going on here is turning the justice system and our legal principles on their head by gaining someone’s consent to the most personal thing they have in their most vulnerable moment, and then storing and cataloging that and weaponizing it against them for some unrelated purpose,” Pointer said.
It is illegal for crime victims’ DNA to be used in federal databases. But there’s no such law in many states, including in California at the time DNA was taken from Doe, to stop officials from storing and using it for other purposes.
“It absolutely raises some deep concerns,” said Jen King, a technology and privacy expert at Stanford University. “Here’s a point where someone was at their most vulnerable, gave up their DNA for criminal investigation, for justice, and then had it exploited by the SFPD.”
San Francisco’s crime lab stopped the practice after the incident, admitting it had also been storing the DNA of violent crime victims and victimized children.
“I’m not an animal; I don’t want no specimen of me collected in any way,” Doe said. “I’m not no one’s pet. I’m my own person. I belong to one person only, and that’s God.”
The police department says it can’t comment on pending litigation, though SFPD Chief William Scott earlier this year said, “We own this error.” Adding “And we will make sure this won’t happen ever again.”
The City of San Francisco told CBS News it is “committed to ensuring all victims of crime feel comfortable reporting issues to law enforcement and has taken steps to safeguard victim information.” It didn’t say what those steps are.
“The police, when they come and get the DNA and the permission from you, they don’t tell you, ‘Hey, by the way, you give me this and I can use it for whatever reason I want – good, bad or other. I can sell it, I can let other people access it,'” Pointer said. “When a woman or a person is in that point of vulnerability and the police say, ‘Hey this is the key we need in order to help us in order to help you,’ that person in that moment isn’t thinking, ‘I’ve given away my rights for a lifetime.'”
Experts say the incident could have a chilling effect on rape victims’ willingness to come forward.
“I want to see justice,” Doe said. “I want to see women being protected. I want to see respect for humanity, for individuals. I want respect for myself.”
Earlier this month, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a measure that prohibits the use of DNA collected from sexual assault victims for anything other than identifying a rape suspect.
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