The Honolulu Police Department has 1,500 rape kits dating back more than a decade that haven’t been tested, a spokeswoman for the department confirmed Wednesday afternoon.

On average, only 15 to 20 percent of kits, which include forensic evidence from sexual assault victims, end up getting tested, said HPD’s Michelle Yu. The evidence, which can take hours to collect from the bodies of victims, can yield DNA evidence that helps to bolster prosecutions, identify serial rapists and in some cases exonerate the wrongfully accused.

Yu’s disclosure contradicts testimony provided earlier in the day by HPD Forensic Lab Director Wayne Kimoto during a Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee hearing. He told lawmakers that the department doesn’t know how many rape kits it has collected over the years that have gone untested.

Kimoto said that his lab would need to hire one to two fully dedicated staffers to sort through the inventory to come up with a figure. When asked how long that might take, he said about one year, or by next year’s legislative session.

Kimoto’s testimony during the Senate hearing angered some lawmakers.

“I’m flabbergasted at the fact that you don’t have any idea how many are untested,” Sen. Will Espero told Kimoto. “Do you have an idea if we are talking dozens or hundreds?”

Kimoto responded, “I think it would be reckless for me to give an estimate if I don’t have an estimate.”

Asked to explain Kimoto’s testimony, Yu said later in the day that “he didn’t have a final number, so he didn’t want to take a chance on giving out the wrong number.” She said the department was able to finalize a figure after the hearing.

Yu said that it would cost $2.3 million to outsource the entire backlog of rape kits for testing. After that, she said it could cost about $800,000 a year to keep up with testing the approximately 150 rape kits HPD gets annually.

Yu said she couldn’t speculate on why the department hasn’t been testing all of the rape kits. She noted that kits are analyzed only when there is a request from a prosecutor or detective in a case.

Kimoto’s testimony came during a Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee hearing on Senate Bill 2309, introduced by Sen. Laura Thielen (D, Hawaii Kai- Waimanalo-Kailua) which would establish a sexual assault kit tracking program. The bill requires law enforcement agencies to submit rape kits obtained during a criminal investigation to a lab within 10 days and requires tests to be completed within six months. The bill also requires the results to be uploaded to the state DNA database and the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System.

SB 2309 and its companion House Bill 1907, introduced by Rep. Linda Ichiyama (D, Salt Lake-Moanalua Valley), are top priorities of the Women’s Legislative Caucus this year.

Espero (D, Ewa Beach- Iroquois Point) sounded shocked when told by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about the number of untested rape kits.

“It doesn’t sound like it is a priority item to get these tested, contrary to what many in the community believe,” he said.

For years, advocates for sexual assault victims have criticized law enforcement agencies throughout the country for allowing rape kits to sit untested in storage facilities. An investigation last year conducted by USA TODAY and dozens of other journalists found at least 70,000 neglected rape kits in more than 1,000 police agencies. The report, which investigated a small fraction of police departments, estimated that the number of untested rape kits nationally reaches into the hundreds of thousands.

Critics say that law enforcement agencies are failing to take advantage of an important tool that can help catch serial rapists and prevent them from attacking more victims.

“The vast majority of rapists are repeat and serial offenders — rape is not a singular crime that is only committed once and then never re-committed,” Cathy Betts, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women, wrote in testimony in support of SB 2309.

Betts cited a recent study of college campus sexual assault that found that nine out of 10 men who commit sexual assaults on college campuses are serial rapists, with up to six victims.

“The numbers and statistics are staggering and frightening,” Betts wrote.