Lavinia B. Masters | 2020 National Crime Victims' Service Awards Tribute Video

LAVINIA MASTERS: When I was 13 years old, I was raped at knifepoint in my home in the West Dallas area. I'm an innocent child. What happens next? Nothing. Nothing for 21 years.

The day I discovered my rape kit was sitting on a shelf, I'm not going to lie. I was, I was frustrated. I was, I was very angry.

I discovered who my rapist was because I chose to have my kit examined. But my perpetrator could not be prosecuted because we missed two statute of limitations.

My one kit led me to discover in the city of Dallas there were over 4,000 kits that were sitting on the shelf and in the state of Texas about 20,000 kits that were untested. I said, I'm going to take this anger that I have, I'm going to talk about justice.

...was not a felon, he could have got...

I began to write letters. I began to knock on legislators' doors. Governor Greg Abbott signed the Lavinia Masters Act into law September 1st of 2019. To me, it says that you have your life back, you have control. It has a time set on when your rape kit is examined, which is 90 days. It gives you a tracking system, so now you can actually log on and look and see what's happening with your rape kit. And that's a beautiful thing. 

We have to be the change. We can use our voices, even in the bad things that happen to us. I want people to trust and believe in themselves.

We're not victims. We're survivors!