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Definitions

  • Sexual Assault Kit: A box that contains materials for documenting and preserving evidence collected during a forensic sexual assault examination at a medical facility.
  • Unsubmitted Sexual Assault Kit: A sexual assault kit that was not sent to the Washington State Crime Lab for forensic testing by law enforcement.
  • Unreported/Anonymous Sexual Assault Kit: A sexual assault kit which was collected at the hospital, but the survivor chose not to file a report with law enforcement.
  • CODIS: The Combined DNA Indexing System is a software system that contains databases of DNA profiles including convicted offender profiles and profiles from sexual assault kits and crime scenes. For more information about CODIS Click here.
  • CODIS hit: A foreign DNA profile from a sexual assault kit that was uploaded into CODIS and matched against one or more profiles within CODIS.
  • Forensic Match: The foreign DNA profile from the sexual assault kit that was uploaded into CODIS matched a DNA profile in the forensic index. The forensic index contains evidentiary profiles from crimes and are connected to incidents or cases and not to specific individuals.  Therefore, these matches represent connections between cases and may not provide information which identifies a suspect. 
  • Offender hit: A foreign DNA profile from a sexual assault kit that was uploaded into CODIS and matched a DNA profile in the offender or arrestee index. The offender and arrestee indexes contain DNA profiles obtained at the point of arrest or conviction and are connected to a named individual. For the purposes of this project, offender hits can be classified as cold or warm hits. This terminology and sub-classification is different than current FBI/CODIS terminology.
  • Cold hit: A foreign DNA profile from a sexual assault kit that matched the DNA profile of an offender or arrestee and that offender/arrestee was not named as a suspect in the case associated with the sexual assault kit.
  • Warm (confirmatory) hit: A foreign DNA profile from a sexual assault kit that matched the DNA profile of an offender or arrestee and that offender/arrestee was named as a suspect in the case associated with the sexual assault kit.
  • SANE: A Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner or SANE, is a nurse trained to conduct forensic medical examinations.
  • SAKI: Sexual Assault Kit Initiative
  • WSPCL: Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory
  • DNA: Deoxyribonucleic Acid