Lisa Nuñez-Najera saw the business card tucked near the screen door of her Kansas home. She grabbed it and read the name. It was from a lieutenant with the sex crimes unit of the Wichita Police Department.
Questions flooded her mind, a new one before she could process the last. Was she in trouble? Had something terrible happened to a family member? Or maybe they were calling about one of the sexual assaults she had reported over the years. But why now?
Nuñez-Najera was wary of the police, from too many times when she had called for help and felt, instead, judged. Yet she picked up the phone.
The lieutenant said he wanted to speak with her about a rape she had reported in 2006. For a split second, she had to search to find the memory. When she did, she struggled to breathe.
It had been 12 years.
The agency had just now processed her sexual assault evidence kit, the lieutenant explained. They had found a man’s DNA.
Nuñez-Najera was confused. She thought the kit had been tested years ago.