Utahns train Zambian scientists on DNA lab to fight child rape


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SALT LAKE CITY — When Katongo Chipompo returns home to Zambia in September, he'll share with his country a powerful crime-fighting tool that should also help with cultural reform.

Chipompo is the assistant police commissioner in Zambia. Sorenson Forensics of Salt Lake City began training Chipompo and two colleagues to establish their first DNA laboratory, where they can use the sophisticated evidence, and make headway against sex crimes.

"This is just like a gateway," Chipompo said.

Sorenson Forensics works on DNA cases for crime labs in Utah, across the United States, and has set up similar labs in Nigeria and Senegal. For six weeks, Sorenson scientists are using their expertise to train the forensic scientists from Zambia to battle an epidemic of child abuse in that African nation.

"We need the scientific approach to the detection of crime," the assistant police commissioner tells me.

If prosecutors in Zambia use legitimate DNA evidence in sex crimes, they can convict the rapists, and change cultural perceptions about sex abuse. Child sexual abuse is rampant in Zambia — one clinic in the capital reported more than 1,200 cases each year.

"For child sexual abuse, it's in the tens to hundreds of thousands," said Cami Green, who helps facilitate the DNA instruction for Sorenson Forensics.

"The sad part is that it's alarming," Chipompo said.


Right now, it's culturally acceptable, and without the forensic DNA capability, they just don't have the tools to properly prosecute.

–Cami Green, facilitator for DNA instruction at Sorenson Forensics


He said the DNA analysis is a critical tool in prosecuting the abusers. Without DNA evidence from an accredited lab, the court must weigh the victim's word against the attacker's word in a culture that gives the rape victim little voice.

Chipompo said DNA evidence is especially important in light of a strange cultural phenomenon that has arisen in Zambia in the last two decades. Traditional healers have spread the belief that if a person with the HIV-virus rapes a child, the virus will be cured. That unfounded belief has lead to a perpetual cycle of crime.

The visiting Zambian scientists also said that a child raped by an elder within an extended family would not accuse the attacker. That cultural bias also gives sexual abusers plenty of freedom to commit crimes.

"Right now, it's culturally acceptable, and without the forensic DNA capability, they just don't have the tools to properly prosecute," Green said.

Scientists from Sorenson Forensics will help establish the lab when they travel to Zambia in January. The lab will help law enforcement agencies increase the effectiveness of prosecuting child sexual assault cases through the collection and timely processing of forensic DNA evidence.

It's a five-year public-private partnership to save lives and prosecute the criminals. The partnership was formed between the Georgian Foundation, four ministries of Zambian government and Sorenson Forensics.

The DNA lab is part of a multi-pronged strategy to tackling sex crimes that includes better police investigations and prosecutions. The lab will also help process DNA evidence from a variety of other kinds of crimes, too.

"With the help of identification, you can look for suspects," Chipompo said.

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Jed Boal

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